Tel Aviv will officially launch its new CityZone "smart city" pilot near Tel Aviv University and in Park Atidim on Friday. The process to select startup companies to participate in the program has begun in recent days. The startups will be asked to recommend solutions for municipal challenges in the fields of transportation, security, education, community and sanitation hazards.
Smart-city planners face a broad range of challenges, from providing independence and mobility for elderly residents to identifying criminal offenders automatically and in real time – for example, perfecting the ability to identify litterers or people involved in physical altercations throughout the city.
In an age where self-driving cars have been tabbed as the next great technological revolution, one of the important challenges for the smart city is to provide suitable infrastructure.
Within the framework of the CityZone project, the Tel Aviv municipality has turned Park Atidim, north of Tel Aviv, into its primary test site for a functional smart city and urban technologies. The goal of the test site is to connect residents, local authorities, large international corporations and young startups to advance solutions for urban challenges. Global companies partaking in the project will have access to the test site for research and development purposes and to run simulations, along with the right to "adopt" local startups and work with them to develop groundbreaking technologies.
Kiryat Atidim CEO Sagi Niv told Israel Hayom: "Our innovation platforms are committed to giving corporations and startups in the field of smart cities the necessary resources for developing their technologies."
Antoine Basseville, director of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi's Innovation Lab in Israel said, "We recently started working with Israeli startups on establishing technological feasibility and building a prototype for a smart city."
