City Council adopts Smart-City-Strategy for Dresden

Implementation of nine model projects can begin

At its meeting on Thursday, June 15, 2023, the city council gave the green light for the implementation of the Smart-City strategy of the state capital Dresden. The vision: to use the opportunities offered by digitalization to take a more experimental approach to urban development and involve citizens more closely. The aim is to create a climate-neutral and socially just Dresden.

By 2026, the city administration and municipal public utilities, together with partners, now want to implement nine specific model projects in the districts of Prohlis, Johannstadt and Friedrichstadt and bring the vision to life:

  • Cleema - A digital platform is to motivate Dresdeners to adopt sustainable behavior.
  • Environmental monitoring - A digital 3D twin Dresdenis to be created, which can be used to better and more accurately predict severe storms and their effects, among other things. Buildings, for example, can then be better protected on the basis of the simulation.
  • Traffic management system - With the help of sensors in roads and the intelligent evaluation and linking of data, cars, public transport and bicycles can be better guided along their routes, thus reducing noise, dust and traffic pollution.
  • Strategic maintenance management - Instead of only recording the condition of Dresdens roads every five to six years with measuring vehicles, sensors should provide information that makes it possible to identify and repair minor problem areas before they cause major damage. Extensive roadworks and closures can thus be avoided.
  • Sector coupling in an energy self-sufficient district - A concept is to be developed that will enable a residential district to supply itself completely with energy and become independent of the electricity and heating grid. The energy comes from geothermal energy and photovoltaics.
  • Smartes Energy Model - A model for a climate-neutral energy supply is to be created for the Friedrichstadt Municipal Hospital.
  • Open data - Open data is to be made available and usable for citizens, business and administration.
  • Smart Participation - A concept for digital citizen participation in Dresden is to be developed and the citizen lab is to become a participatory service provider for the population and administration.
  • Digital sports park - An app will enable all users of the sports park in the Ostra-Gehege, such as clubs, citizens, tourists and companies, to book services digitally and in a citizen-friendly way.

Prof. Dr. Michael Breidung, Head of IT Services Dresden, says: "The Smart-City strategy for Dresden picks up on the megatrends of social development and translates them into content-related guidelines for the development of digital services in urban areas. Over the next few years, model projects with a nationwide impact in the areas of environment, transport, energy, sport and open data will be implemented as part of the implementation phase, which will have a positive impact on the people of Dresden."

The projects within the Smart Cities model project are to be funded by the Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Building and the project sponsor Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW). Dresden is one of 28 cities that have been selected as model municipalities for Smart City projects in 2021. Since the beginning of last year, the project team has been working with the WISSENSARCHITEKTUR Laboratory of Knowledge Architecture at the Technical University Dresden on the Dresden Smart-City strategy that has now been adopted. In strategy workshops, participants from city administration offices, the project team of the IT department and the Technical University Dresden came together at a (partly virtual) table. In participation formats such as the future trajectory or an online survey, the people of Dresden had the opportunity to contribute their ideas for a Dresden Smart City .

Jörg Rainer Noennig, Head of WISSENSARCHITEKTUR: "The Dresden Smart-City model project provides excellent opportunities to test digital technologies and methods for urban development and to bring them to bear locally in urban neighborhoods. With them, Dresden can establish itself even more strongly as a creative city in which innovative sustainability approaches can be tested and paths for the creation of new resources can be opened up." The interdisciplinary research group is based at the Faculty of Architecture and has been investigating topics in the context of digital urban development for over ten years. The WISSENSARCHITEKTUR-Lab helped design the Smart-City model project from the application phase onwards, led the "strategy development" sub-project and is responsible for the accompanying and synthesis research in the subsequent implementation phase.