Transforming modern cities into citizen-centered smart cities: The case of the city of Heraklion

Transforming modern cities into citizen-centered smart cities: The case of the city of Heraklion

From the mid-2000s, the Municipality of Heraklion began to orient itself towards the vision of the digital city with a series of projects that created the critical mass of interventions so that citizens could begin to perceive the first results and effects in their daily lives.

In 2009 he presented the first strategic plan entitled “Statutory Map of Obligations of Municipal Authorities towards Citizens in the Knowledge Society” and in 2016 a comprehensive strategic plan for the transformation of Heraklion into a “SMART CITY” was presented to the Municipal Council of Heraklion which is the guide for our actions and interventions.

This is a long-term clear commitment of the Municipal authorities (since 2009) which is accompanied by the decision of the cooperation of all the city’s bodies in the “Heraklion, smart city” Committee that was first established in 2011, as well as other consultation committees that our Municipality has set up. However, in addition to institutional participation, we encourage the participation of citizens in voluntary action groups and this is a new element that contributes to the urban transformation of the city.

In 2021 the Municipal Council of Heraklion discussed and decided as part of our smart city strategy to focus our attention on the management of urban data, its visualization and dissemination as open data to enhance the creation of solutions to problems and to improve of the decision-making processes by the Municipal authority.

Today Heraklion is recognized as one of the strongest digital cities in Europe (Digital cities Challenge) and participates in the European initiative Intelligent Cities Challenge in the context of the direction of the digital transformation of European cities.

In the presentation, a brief reference will be made to the current digital strategy of Heraklion and the results of good project practices. In particular, the project of the digital platform Heraklion Smart City (www.smartcity.heraklion.gr) will be presented, through which the vision of the Municipality of Heraklion is realized. for the management of the data generated by the local urban environment (collection, storage, visualization, sharing).

Through its implementation, the Municipality acquires its own dominant technological infrastructure based on open technological solutions that host, analyze and distribute the city’s data based on international standards and best practices on open data.

Thus, with a focus on data, a statistical portal of the city is created, decision-making is supported and local governance is “democratized”, citizen participation is increased and entrepreneurship is further developed.

At the same time as the participatory way in which the platform is created, an interacting local ecosystem is created by the bodies of Local Government, academic research institutes, businesses and citizens).