Let's stop for a moment and affirm it: the impact that the human race creates on the planet can no longer be hidden. Technological progress has created many opportunities, such as new digital and physical connections. Think about the e-commerce sector: with five clicks we can buy, comfortably from our couch, everything we want. Of course, all this has a cost, especially in terms of environmental impact and energy waste.
The European Union is acting in many directions to deal with this emergency. One of these is Stardust, a project in the European Horizon2020 programme.
What is Stardust?
Stardust is a project that involves seven European cities. Seven realities far apart but united towards only one single goal: improve the quality of life of the citizens. Stardust wants to address urban challenges, to encourage the creation of a low environmental impact through smart cities, to develop new technologies and build new business models that combine energy, mobility and communication technologies (ICT). The municipality of Trento, initially candidate and subsequently chosen as a partner of the project, has proposed many solutions to hit the objectives of Stardust.
But they want to do more. Often, in fact, it is not enough to find a solution to a problem. You also need to be able to communicate it externally, making it accessible and understandable for others.
For this reason, the municipality of Trento wanted to build its first Innovation Challenge together with us.
An innovative competition with double purpose linked to a fundamental part of Stardust project: the creation of a HUB capable of coordinating the delivery of the packages in the last urban mile, inside in the historic centre of the city. The HUB will allow only electric vehicles to manage the delivery, drastically reducing pollution and road traffic.
The Innovation Challenge is part of this virtuous process that aims for greater environmental sustainability and it will involve two specific challenges: first of all how to communicate effectively the valour of this HUB to the citizen and the retailers; secondly, understand what kind of supplementary business models could be developed. The proposed solutions should be feasible now and applicable in the future.
The challenge was accepted by 33 students, all talents from the University of Trento. Students with completely different academic backgrounds: psychologists, engineerings, lawyers, sociologist and economists!
For us and for the municipality of Trento the innovation begins when the contamination of competences appears.
The teams immediately dived into the competition by delving into the topic of smart cities, environmental sustainability and the business models already implemented in some European cities. This will be the start to think about innovative and effective solutions.
The teams have four weeks to develop their proposals and show it. A commission composed by Assessor of the mobility of Trento, the Director of the mobility of Trento and the Director of Trentino Mobilità will evaluate the work done by the teams and then select the most convincing and complete idea.
Don't worry, CLab will update you on this initiative.
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