The Hague is the winner of a World Smart City Award 2021.
LivingLab Scheveningen is the winner of the international World Smart City Award. This award is given annually to cities that make the world a more liveable and sustainable place. This year, The Hague was in the finals with New York and Konya (Turkey) in the energy and environment category.
Alderman Saskia Bruines was elated about the announcement and said:
"What an incredible result and recognition for the LivingLab Scheveningen. This award emphasizes how innovatively The Hague is working to increase it’s safety, sustainability, and become even more of a liveable city. This emphasizes that The Hague is an international leader when it comes to implementing digital innovations with the help of new technologies”.
LivingLab Scheveningen.
The Smart City approach from the Municipality of The Hague is reflected in the LivingLab Scheveningen project. Since 2020, the new boulevard, from Zwarte Pad to the Pier, has become a testing ground for new projects. This area is a special learning zone, where the municipality is testing smart, digital inventions that aim to solve societal problems. Through these initiatives, LivingLab Scheveningen wants to discover innovative sustainable solutions that will provide a working blue-print to become the city of the future.
As an example of such projects, experiments are being conducted with self-driving waste robots and the construction of a local smart grid for clean energy.
Alderman Mulder elaborates on LivingLab’s activities:
"It's great that we're getting recognition for our efforts, such as our trials with pressure cameras on the Noordboulevard in Scheveningen. In a privacy friendly way, special cameras detect the formation of groups, in order to measure the crowds and prevent overcrowding/social unrest ."
Other Innovations:
Another example is the digital signs near the beach that lets visitors know if the sea is safe to swim in. The LivingLab utilizes the recently installed digital infrastructure on the boulevard. This comprises of smart lampposts and underground fiber optic connections. In the coming years the lab will be extended to the rest of the boulevard, up to and including the Harbour Head.
World Smart City Award
The World Smart City Award was presented today during the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, which is attended by some 700 cities from countries all over the world. The Hague is well positioned internationally as a 'smart city' as it is the second time in three years that The Hague has won the World Smart City Award. In 2018 The Hague won the award with The innovative iZi Gezond Lang Thuis project ‘Living a Long and Healthy Life at Home’ in the Inclusive & Sharing Cities category.