SoftBank will join Dublin City Council’s smart city programme and its Docklands District testbed with a remit to make the “opportunity of smart city technology a reality.” The pair have struck a deal to exchange information and knowledge about smart city solutions, exploring trials, proofs and use cases in the Irish capital, they said.
Smart Dublin, a smart-city cooperative combining the four local authorities in the Irish capital, emphasised the work will deliver “real impact”, and solutions that are “designed to scale”, which can be transferred easily to other cities. SoftBank will pilot its global internet-of-things (IoT) platform in Dublin, as part of an initial collaboration across the city’s “tech ecosystem”.
Owen Keegan, chief executive of Dublin City Council, commented: “This partnership will help position Dublin at the forefront of smart city innovation and turn the opportunity of smart city technologies into a reality. We are committed to building a programme of activity through ‘Smart Dublin’ and to concentrate pilots across our Smart Docklands testbed district which is emerging as a world class smart technology testbed.”
The deal affords Softbank the chance work with industry, academia and entrepreneurs in Europe, and to test and augment its smart-city experiences from Japan, to solve city challenges and improve service delivery.
Junichi Miyakawa, representative director and chief technology officer at SoftBank, said: “We look forward to collaborating with Dublin City Council to share our rich experience in smart city development in Japan and to also leverage our global IoT platform. SoftBank strongly believes it can contribute to Dublin’s development and future growth building out local solutions that can scale globally.”
Dublin’s ‘Smart Docklands’ programme is the result of a collaboration between Dublin City Council and its SFI CONNECT research centre based at Trinity College, Dublin.
In April, Smart Dublin announced €1.2 million of new funding for smart city projects. The new projects, split across two funding blocks, are geared towards providing low-cost solutions to twin-sets of civic challenges, including mobility, connectivity and logistics, and dumping, flooding and way-finding.
