Integrated solutions for smart regions

The project

Many Interreg projects are dealing with “intelligent” spatial and regional development. Examples of this are the CORA und COM³ projects developed and coordinated by aconium in the Interreg North Sea Region Programme. An important finding from these projects: Integrated approaches, bringing together different perspectives and sectors, and organizational structures geared towards this are a key success factor for sustainable and “intelligent” regional development.

That is why we are now bringing together projects looking at “smart” regional development from quite different perspectives:

• projects that focus on digital technologies and discuss phenomena such as “data as a service”, “big data” or the “internet of things” as a driver of regional development,
• projects that have a stronger focus on social innovations and on strengthening civil society actors,
• projects focussing on regional economic development and innovation policy, e.g. by supporting regions in implementing regional strategies for smart specialization (RIS3).

The project “Integrated solutions for smart regions“ brings together German representatives of the following 12 Interreg projects for an exchange of experiences on the subject of “integrated solutions for smart regions”:

• BLING (North Sea Region)
• Co2mmunity (Baltic Sea Region)
• COM³ (North Sea Region)
• CORA (North Sea Region)
• Dynaxibility4CE (Central Europe)
• HUPMOBILE (Baltic Sea Region)
• Like! (North Sea Region)
• LOW-CARB (Central Europe)
• LARS (Baltic Sea Region)
• LUCIA (Baltic Sea Region)
• SmartVillages (Alpine Space)
• UrbCulturalPlanning (Baltic Sea Region)

The central question is what constitutes successful integrated strategies for “smart regions” and how these can be implemented.

Goals

The goal is to develop a joint position on which funding priorities in the area of “intelligent” regional development are needed in the coming Interreg funding period 2021–2027. In addition to new project ideas, comments on the draft Interreg B cooperation programmes will be developed and recommendations on funding priorities addressed to the German programme actors.

aconium responsibilities

aconium has developed the project and acts as project manager. We moderate the exchange between the participating 12 Interreg projects, analyse their results and take the lead in developing the recommendations arising from the project.