Central Eastern European solutions for smarter cities and traffic

Budapest, Hungary/ Chemnitz, Germany, 23.01.2017. In January 2016, [ui!] - the urban institute^® opened a new chapter in Hungary to meet Central and Eastern European cities’ needs, especially in the field of traffic. “New technologies can offer significant changes in the way cities and their transport and traffic systems have to be designed, integrated and operated”, says the urban institute Hungary CEO Peter Bakonyi. Citizens of growing cities in Central Eastern Europe and around the world faced huge challenges due to increasing traffic while road capacities were limited.

A key approach for the Budapest based company is data usage driven research projects and co-operations. Key aims are to developing promising technologies such as autonomous driving, supported by car-to-infrastructure and infrastructure-to-car communication. In their first year of business, the Hungarian team and their colleagues of [ui!] Group, focused on software and business development as well participation in EU calls. [ui!] Hungary will continue to support cities with cloud-based traffic data utilization, such as dynamic and cooperating lane control for urban transport, as well as electric mobility.

Significant milestones in 2016 have been the “European Economic Danube Forum – Smart Cities” in Göttweig, Austria and the “Hungarian Future Internet Conference” in Budapest to exchange views with other colleagues in the region. “We continue to establish strong contacts to cities and municipalities in Hungary and Central Eastern Europe in order to transfer specific know-how from smart city projects to the region”, says Peter Bakonyi. Each city had different challenges and therefore each city had to define its own smart city vision and the derived strategy heading to that vision.