Topic: smart-city-expo-world-congress

As the world’s leading Smart City event, Smart City Expo World Congress 2021 was a unique platform for urbanists, city leaders, solution providers, private enterprises, and citizens to connect and share ideas. With cities facing bigger challenges than ever before, the need for idea sharing platforms like SCEWC has never been greater. SCEWC 2021 has already been and gone, but the memories of the event will leave a lasting impression until next year when SCEWC will return to Barcelona for its 11^th edition.

Ever since the event’s first edition in 2011, the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) has been at the forefront of Smart City innovation. As the world's largest Smart City event, the Barcelona-based Expo has been a major driving force of the Smart City agenda, empowering cities, promoting collaboration, and creating valuable partnerships between private businesses and public sector departments. All in the hope of bringing social equity, sustainability, resilience, and a brighter future for our cities and the citizens who live within them.

Meeting those needs presents an incredibly urgent and disconcertingly novel set of challenges. So, what are cities doing beyond locking down and freezing up? What kind of systems and smart city innovations should they put in place to be more resilient?

Earlier this year, bee smart city partner Leading Cities, a global network for Smart City growth and collaboration, has launched a global Smart City startup accelerator program that provides potential capital from a network of investors as well as the tools and knowledge of how to do business with cities. In this year’s edition 27 semi-finalists have been selected from more than 550 applications from over 40 countries. From this global pack of urban innovators, three startups emerged as AcceliCITY winners - one for each track of the AcceliCITY program (clean energy, city visualization and general tracks).