- European Business Summit

EUREKA Clusters at EBS 2015
Smart City: EUREKA’s InterCluster in the lead
Brussels, 4 May 2015: On the occasion of the 15th European Business Summit (EBS), which
will take place on the 6th and 7th of May 2015 at the Palais d’Egmont in Brussels, the
EUREKA initiative and its clusters will promote the Smart city initiative launched last
November in Basel.
Cities and communities around the world face difficult challenges. 50% of the world’s
population lives in urban areas. This is expected to rise to 60% before 2025. As a result, the
pressure on city infrastructures will require enormous redesign and capital expenditure. Frost
& Sullivan estimates a world market potential of $1.5 trillion in 2020 for the Smart City market
in segments of energy and water, transportation, mobility, healthcare, building, infrastructure
and governance.
EUREKA, the intergovernmental initiative has been at the forefront of innovative products,
processes and services for 30 years with a unique and constant “industrial bottom up”
approach. It has contributed to Smart City applications and solutions with a number of
projects. Through these projects, EUREKA has tried to address the technological challenges
aimed at adopting Smart City solutions and proposes innovations to be used across city
sectors. Since 2010, more than 100 projects contributing to smart cities and representing B€
1.1 of public and private funding have been labelled by EUREKA. The InterCluster
Committee estimates that such projects could represent up to 2 B€ by 2020 and urges
EUREKA Members States to provide adequate support. The major part of most Smart City
projects are initiated by industry led consortia gathering large companies and SMEs, typical
of EUREKA projects and in particular Clusters.
EUREKA Clusters are committed to encourage and facilitate collaborative innovative
proposals addressing smart cities. EUREKA Clusters are the entry point for Smart City
projects driven by industry, focused on innovative systems, solutions and services.
Jean Luc Mate, InterCluster Committee Chairman stated: “We aim to increase interest
and project participation in smart cities. It is important to highlight the fact that there has been
a lot of interest from companies to use the EUREKA platform for Smart City projects since a
number of years. We will encourage more the industry to enable business models and
empower people”.
About Clusters: EUREKA Clusters are strategic initiatives proposed and led by industry. Clusters
facilitate innovative projects involving a strong industrial participation spanning large companies and
SMEs as well as research institutions and public organisations.
About EUREKA: EUREKA is an intergovernmental organisation for market-driven industrial R&D.
It is a decentralised network facilitating the coordination of national funding on innovation aiming to
boost the productivity & competitiveness of European industries. The network integrates over 40 panEuropean economies, but also includes Israel, South Africa, South Korea, and Canada. Following a
bottom-up approach with projects being in any technological area with a civilian purpose, EUREKA
has been the driving force of innovation in Europe for 30 years.
More information here: www.eurekanetwork.org/smart-cities