BABLE Smart Cities becomes SDIA’s latest partner

Hamburg, Germany, 18 January 2022 – We are proud to formally announce that BABLE, a community which provides high-quality information and services to drive implementation of smart city solutions, has become an official SDIA partner.

BABLE’s main purpose is to support the sustainable development of smart cities in Europe and beyond. As a neutral facilitator between the public and private sectors, BABLE aims to create liveable, future-proof, and sustainable cities based on innovation and collaboration.

“Cities and city regions worldwide are increasingly harnessing the potential of smart city solutions, especially those which create and deploy big data to tackle critical societal challenges, address key public policy problems, and enable public, private, and third-sector stakeholders to provide better delivery of products and services,” said Tamlyn Shimizu, Global Digital Growth Manager at BABLE.

According to BABLE, at the heart of any high-performing smart city is a high-performing sustainable digital infrastructure.

“There are leading cities showing the way toward the purposeful use of data in a context of sustainable digital infrastructure, though many questions are still to be answered,” Shimizu stressed.

The partnership with SDIA will help further develop BABLE’s strategy when it comes to enabling sustainable smart city solutions, while further contributing to its extensive network.

“Since the sharing of best practices (use cases are on the BABLE website), bridging and connecting divides in the smart city arena is at the core of what we do, collaboration and working with partners is an essential part of our goals. SDIA provides a unique opportunity to be a part of a mission that is fundamental when building and implementing holistic smart city solutions,” Shimizu said.

Michael J. Oghia, SDIA’s Director of External Relations, welcomes BABLE Smart Cities to the Alliance, underscoring that BABLE is uniquely qualified to offer critical insights into the challenges that creating smart cities face, particularly as they relate to sustainability. 

“BABLE’s expertise in developing smart cities and creating rich networks of like-minded stakeholders is crucial to our goals,” Oghia noted, adding: “Sustainability is such a critical component of smart city infrastructure, and we’re excited that this partnership will allow us to exchange expertise in a way that adds value to both of our networks.”

BABLE has a similar approach to the new partnership. “As a company that thrives as a network and community, tapping and sharing networks and building upon our joint communities is a great way of fostering more collaboration —) bringing together more minds to solve our most pressing challenges,” Shimizu highlighted.

Sharing best practices and lessons learned can help tackle some of the key challenges surrounding the topic of a sustainable digital infrastructure that cities face as well. For example, building data ecosystems and fostering interoperability within the infrastructure is a key action point for the path forward, as is helping smart city solution providers work more closely with digital infrastructure providers, such as data centers, on sustainability solutions like transforming excess heat waste into a valuable resource for urban communities.

“In the end, digital infrastructure should support governance and tech for public good and to create better lives for the citizens of our cities,” Shimizu noted.

Established in 2019 and co-based in Hamburg, Germany, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, SDIA is a nonprofit network of more than 65 organizations working to catalyze the transition to sustainable digital infrastructure, aligning all actors of the digital ecosystem on the mission of addressing greenhouse gas emissions, resource consumption, pollution, and other key metrics across the global digital economy, and realizing its Roadmap to Sustainable Digital Infrastructure by 2030.

By working together on implementing SDIA’s Roadmap, BABLE will also get the chance to broaden their own work when it comes to urban innovation projects.

“Only 10-23% of urban innovation projects are successful. Therefore, smart cities remain a puzzle ready to be solved. Smart cities are not a static concept but a process by which cities become more ‘liveable and resilient,’” Shimizu concluded.