iCity 1: Impulse project

The iCity partnership is concerned with research on the liveable, intelligent and sustainable city of the future. In the current set-up phase it consists of 32 economic partners (including 13 SMEs) and 12 municipal partners. The partnership is managed by the HFT. It is currently working on an impulse project with 20 sub-projects, including three exploratory projects, two SME projects and a management project. Together with its partners, it stimulates new projects with innovative methods, services and products for the intelligent city, which can be used for the Stuttgart Metropolitan Region and beyond.

The iCity: Intelligent City partnership is working to establish itself in the country as an innovation hub with an iCity laboratory in the field of the liveable, intelligent and sustainable city (LIN city) of the future. It conducts research on innovations and their inter- and transdisciplinary development in the context of sustainable urban development.

At the beginning of the project, the partnership was established by the project leadership, supported by a project management, working structures were introduced, committees were formed. These are a highly qualified advisory board, a steering committee and the internal steering committee at the HFT, consisting of the Rector, the Vice Rector Research and the project management.

Since May 2019, the concept for the intensification phase has been further developed in a structured and innovative process. At the end of the start-up phase, the project's profile will be sharpened by bundling the topics 'mobility', 'buildings, neighbourhoods and infrastructure', 'energy management and urban simulation' and 'information platform and ICT' in four impulse projects. They are linked to overriding topics such as 'financing and acceptance' and supplemented by exploratory projects on data security and IoT sensor networks. All in all, the topic of LIN urban research is transdisciplinarily defined by cross-competence networking and by cooperation with partners from the regional economy.

The research results are published in a publicly accessible form for exploitation.

The partnership has stimulated a large number of follow-up projects dealing with research on the intelligent city. The third-party funds for the IAF of the HFT could thus be increased significantly. The profile of the HFT as a research institution for an intelligent sustainable city worth living in is being sharpened. The interim results from the subprojects are continuously transferred by researchers to science and practice through conference participation, publications and transfer to teaching. In the long term, the project will be transformed into a technically autonomous and politically independent body that acts as an interface between HFT research and the partner companies involved in the innovation process.