Heroes selected by AI4Cities
After the first phase, Heroes now has been selected to take part in the prototyping phase (phase 2) of AI4Cities, an EU-funded Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project, aiming to help cities (Amsterdam, Paris, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Stavanger and Tallin) accelerate their transition towards carbon neutrality.The project is looking for AI solutions that can contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the fields of mobility and energy, two domains responsible for 82% of all greenhouse gas emissions in European cities.
Following AI4Cities’ Request for Tenders on 01.12.2020 Heroes was one of the 44 companies and consortia to submit an application for AI4Cities energy challenge. In total 97 applications were submitted; following a thorough evaluation by the AI4Cities Buyers Group, 21 suppliers were selected for the mobility challenge and 20 suppliers for the energy challenge. They will now participate in the project’s Solution Design Phase, during which in the next three months they will work on a full plan for the development of a prototype.
The proposed solution of Heroes
The solution that Heroes proposes aims at reducing energy consumption of public buildings by using AI, IoT & Cloud technologies. By reducing energy consumption, they directly reduce CO2 emissions through the reduced consumption of electricity and/or natural gas.
Heroes will now receive budget to further develop its solution in accordance with the input provided by the AI4Cities Buyers Group. They have three months to do so, following which the Buyers Group will evaluate which of these suppliers will continue to Phase 2, the prototyping phase of the PCP.
The AI4Cities Buyers Group consists of lead procurer Forum Virium Helsinki (representing the city of Helsinki), Cap Digital (representing Paris Region), the city of Amsterdam, the city of Copenhagen, the city of Stavanger and the city of Tallinn. These six cities and regions have developed ambitious strategies and policy plans to become carbon neutral by – at latest – 2050.
In AI4Cities they joined forces to go through a PCP process, aiming to procure non-market ready solutions which can help them accelerate their transition to carbon neutrality by utilising artificial intelligence and related enabling technologies – such as big data applications, 5G, edge computing and IoT. Their choice to focus on energy and mobility-related challenges is informed by the fact that these two domains are responsible for 82% of GHG emissions in Europe’s cities.
This is part of the AI4Cities project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme.
