From the 23rd-25th of October, 2019, 70 representatives of the project partners, and additional local stakeholders of +CityxChange project were gathered in Limerick, as part of our second consortium meeting. Taking advantage of this face-to-face interaction, we dived into key challenges that had arise during the first year of the project implementation and and developed joint outcomes which help us to move from the development phase to the deployment phase for the second year of +CityxChange. In total, we organised 8 in-depth workshops, each with a moderator, a problem owner, a clearly defined problem statement and an intended outcome.
Four sessions of 2 parallel workshops each were kicked-off, covering different topics such as:
- Glossary / Pictionary workshop: The aim of this workshop was to develop a common understanding and definitions of central project terms, discussing contested definitions, aligning different usage of terms across project and laying foundation for citizen-friendly definitions and visual descriptions.
- Monitoring and Evaluation workshop: The development of a standardised framework for the M&E, development of a data collation, management and analysis methodology, development of an interactive web based dashboard, and providing an early-warning scoring system were the main issues to work upon
- Privacy and Smart City Data Model Structure: The challenges discussed in this workshop, were related to IT architecture and data, open data portals, APIs, data protection impact assessment, informed consent, the Data Management Plan, and open research data.
- Exploring and sharing ways towards citizen-led energy transitions (Storytelling Workshop): The workshop aimed at exploring ways of creating a better understanding of the experiences, challenges, failures and successes of similar projects in engaging citizens as well as fostering interactive and progressive exchanges between external participants and the +CityxChange team.
- Common Energy Market: During the workshop, the participants reviewed status and learning points from the first year, what to expect in year 2, and how to improve learning between Lighthouse and Follower Cities. In addition, important new knowledge was discussed of how to organize a local energy market so it stimulates the PEB process, principles for the flexibility markets and community grid, as well as replication and investment / financial models and joint funding opportunities.
- CommunityxChange: The workshop included, amongst others, an overview of learnings from the first year, how to transition from the development to the deployment phase, as well as first experiences with monitoring and evaluation, and opportunities for investment, scaling and replication.
- City Modelling: Current modeling on building level is not sufficient, and needs to be able to easier and faster work on community/neighborhood level for better scale-up into a neighborhood. This is needed to be addressed to any community for its operational performance.
- Transport / Mobility: The workshop worked on different approaches to transport and mobility in Europe, depending on size, geographies, etc. The project is trying to define the basic topics firsts and then have breakout discussions.
In addition to the parallel workshops, we held the 2nd General Assembly, and organised PEB Walks of the Limerick demo areas and demo sites. On the final day, we organised an excursion to the ESB Ardnacrusha Hydroelectric Power Station, as well as the Cliffs of Moher.
For more information on our workshops check our report on Intra-Project Collaboration Including Study Visits and Peer-to-Peer Workshops