The Blue City Project is a transdisciplinary consortium, led by Prof. Jeffrey Huang (EPFL, Media and Design Lab) aiming to map a city’s multi-layered, interconnected network of flows and create a responsive Urban Digital Twin for the digitally-transformed, post-pandemic world. Combined with Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning technology, this open platform will assist evidence-based, collective decisions to improve urban well-being, sustainability, resilience, and maximize ecological value. Such a model has the potential to revolutionize the industry, lay fertile foundations for startups and spin-offs along the real estate, design, and city management value chain, and establish Switzerland as a leader in innovative city planning and retrofitting.
FUSTIC helped at building the consortium and connecting the the partners coming from the academia, public and private sectors.
FINANCEMENT
- 4 years project 2022-2025
- 4,883 Mio CHF (2,735Mio cash from Innosuisse + 2,098Mio cash and in-kind from public/private partners)
FINAL GOAL
The ultimate goal of developing an open-source platform will involve mapping, visualization, and networking infrastructure. Maintenance will be a crucial and complex issue to tackle so as to ensure the perpetuation and continued development of the platform beyond the scope of the flagship. Thus, establishment of the Blue Cities Foundation [BCF] will occur concurrently with the later stages of design and development. Based at the host institution of EPFL, the foundation’s goal will be to maintain and nurture the open-source platform once the flagship concludes, and ensure its promotion and perpetuation in subsequent research and development, whether in academia or industry.