Safe & Smart Cities Conference 2015 and Public transport conference: report of a success

The 1st conference on “Safety and Smart Cities”, associated to the 4th Israel-France conference on public transports, has taken place in Tel Aviv on May 11th, 2015. This Israeli-French event has associated various types of stakeholders coming from both countries: municipalities, companies, experts, startups. Israël Science Info was media partner of this event. Dr David Harari and Claude Trink, members of scientific committee d’Israël Science Info, were in charge of the programm.

·  Among the speakers were: the mayor of Nice, Mr Christian Estrosi, the elected officials of Marseille and Toulouse municipalities. Tel Aviv, Ashdod and Herzliya. As well, the Israeli Federation of local authorities and eight other main Israeli municipalities participated to the conference.

·        More than 20 companies such as ORANGE, EGIS, DASSAULT SYSTEMES, SUEZ-ENVIRONNEMENT, ALSTOM, VINCI Construction, SYSTRA and more intervened as well as seven Israeli companies such as IBM, Verint, Mobileye …

·        Experts included Pr Antoine Picon, from Harvard Graduate School of Architecture and from Ecole Nationale Superieure des Ponts et Chaussees ; Pr Carlos Moreno, Expert on Smart & Complex Systems; Mrs Ingeborg Rocker, VP Geovia 3DExperienCity from Dassault Systems ; Mrs Nathalie Boulanger Senior VP Orange Star-up Ecosystem; Mr Gilles Babinet, French digital representative to the European Union ; Pr Avigdor Gal from the Technion and Mr Ophir Pinez-Paz, former minister, in charge of municipalities management at Tel-Aviv University.

The event started by a reception at the residence of French Ambassador to Israël, Mr Patrick Maisonnave, and by a speech from the mayor of Paris, Mrs Anne Hidalgo.

The event is an initiative from the International Forum for Security Technologies (FITS, based in Lyon) and ELNET, a foundation dedicated to strategic issues between Europe and Israel.

The French Embassy in Israel, Business France Agency, the French telecom company ORANGE and the economic newspaper La Tribune have supported the conference.

As well, Israeli ministries and public institutions supported it: Foreign Affairs, National Infrastructures Energy and Water Resources, Science Technology and Space, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Transport authorities, Israel Railways and the national road development Authority.

The unique feature of the conference was to address safety issues and smart solutions, related to the cities.

Safety was here understood in a broad acceptation:

·        Crisis management towards threats coming from violence, natural hazards, water supply and electricity disruptions…

·        Safety in mobility (private and public transportation, parking…)
·        Safety for persons at risk: elderly, disabled and young children
·        Safety in data privacy, especially in relation to policies of open data.

Public transports’ talks tackled:

·        Challenges for public transports in Israel
·        Latest updates on smart technologies on public transports.
The conference also offered an opportunity to discuss Public-Private Partnerships and new approaches in financing. The Israeli Road Map for smart cities was also presented.

Finally, in the frame of this event, a special session was dedicated to startups and innovation, and 15 French and Israeli companies were invited for a “pitching session”.

The conference has put under light the fact that smart cities have now to address seriously safety and mobility issues. This requires the shaping up of collaborative patterns between municipalities, industry and experts, with the aim to:
·        spread information on innovation and tenders
·        share good practices
·        support experimentation, research and development (FIRAD program)
·        participate together to European events (Horizon 2020 and more).

The launching of a networking Internet platform, which will create a community of Israeli and French actors focusing on safety in smart cities, had been decided. Already the cluster Advancity that federates actors from the Greater Paris has indicated its readiness to participate actively to the building of such platform, as well as Tel Aviv Global, Herzliya and Marseille.

The next “Safe and Smart Cities Conference” will take place next year in Nice, alternating with Tel Aviv.