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About the DMI-ecosystem

Photo of men on green roof terrace

The Netherlands faces major and urgent challenges

CO2 and nitrogen emissions must be reduced significantly. We need 900.000 new homes in all parts of our country preferably before 2030, climate issues urgently require adjustments in our built environment and our energy supply is no longer a given. Moreover, our available space, our mobility system, our energy networks and our public finances are under severe pressure. Citizens, businessess and governments experience the consequences every single day. 

 

All these issues are interrelated. And that is why, if we really want to tackle all these major challenges effectively, we must do so in a coherent manner. And we must do so together. To make sure that the way we build our houses, design our cities and move around really does bring sustainable progress for generations to come. And that requires careful coordination of policies and investments - both among governments and between governments and business - to ensure sufficient upscaling and concrete impact. And in doing so, we must maximize the potential of information technology, within socially responsible frameworks.

This is how the DMI-ecosysteem originated

June 2021
The beginning

A few companies contacted the Ministry of Infrastructure and Watermanagement with the idea for a data-driven ecosystem relating to mobility data. Later on, the scope broadened to smart and sustainable urbanisation.

November 2021
1st proposal

Public and Private partners together  submitted the Data-Driven Ecosystem for Mobility and Smart City (DEMS) investment proposal to the Dutch National Growth Fund.

April 2022
Approval

The proposal was approved by the National Growth Fund, on the condition that some adjustments were made. The team went back to incorporate all feedback in a adjusted version of the proposal under a new name: the Dutch Metropolitan Innovations (DMI) ecosystem.

September 2022
Expansion

The adjusted version of the proposal included 17 innovation offers by a number of different (consortia of) partners. Both the ministries of Infrastructure and Watermanagement and Internal Affairs and Kingdom relations and participating municipalities (G40 cities network) submitted the new proposal to the National Growth Fund.

February 2023
Council of Ministers

The Dutch Council of Ministers, based on a positive advice from the National Growth Fund, decides to invest 85 million euros in the further development of the DMI- ecosystem. The business community contributes an additional 42 million euros, an additional 50 million euros comes from local governments.

November 2023
Innovation Assignments

From the DMI ecosystem, the first innovation assignments are being issued. This involves the development of innovative applications, based on data exchange and reuse between different parties and domains.

February 2024
Opening DMI Centre

The DMI Centre, located at Barchman Wuytierslaan 10 in Amersfoort, opens its doors. The Centre offers the DMI network a physical place, centrally located in the country, where public and private partners can meet.

These DOCUMENTS form the basis of the dmi ecosystem

Functioning of the DMI ecosystem.

Collaborate on scalable solutions and responsible use of data.

Executive Summary - NGF proposal Dec 2022

In early 2023, the proposal to establish the public-private ecosystem Dutch Metropolitan Innovations was approved by the National Growth Fund committee. The consortium of companies, knowledge institutes, (pioneering) municipalities, provinces and the Ministries of the Interior and Kingdom Relations and Infrastructure and Water Management wants to give concrete, scalable and data-driven substance to smart, sustainable urbanization and mobility renewal and remove (technological) barriers on the side of supply and demand. An online marketplace will be set up, knowledge sharing will take place, participants in the consortium will make joint agreements on standardization, and participants will realize applications in the field of Digital Twins, City Support Centers, sensor data, mobility hubs and urban data platforms, among other things.

Smart Cities in the G40

Three years ago, Capgemini conducted an inventory of Smart City projects in the G40 municipalities. The survey etalized a wide range of Smart City initiatives (more than 400) for the themes of Smart Governance, Smart Economy, Smart Mobility, Smart Environment, Smart Citizen and Smart Living. The goal of the study was to identify accelerators, bottlenecks and managerial experience so that smart city projects and pilots can be implemented more effectively (in an ecosystem) in the future.  

Dutch Metropolitan Innovations - NGF proposal, public version

In early 2023, the proposal to establish the public-private ecosystem Dutch Metropolitan Innovations was approved by the National Growth Fund committee. The consortium of companies, knowledge institutes, (pioneering) municipalities, provinces and the Ministries of the Interior and Kingdom Relations and Infrastructure and Water Management wants to give concrete, scalable and data-driven substance to smart, sustainable urbanization and mobility renewal and remove (technological) barriers on the side of supply and demand. An online marketplace will be set up, knowledge sharing will take place, participants in the consortium will make joint agreements on standardization, and participants will realize applications in the field of Digital Twins, City Support Centers, sensor data, mobility hubs and urban data platforms, among other things.

Proposition G40 smart, sustainable urbanization and mobility renewal

In 2022, the G40 cities proposed to the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management that all connected cities and the national government jointly develop smart, sustainable urbanization and mobility renewal. G40 cities and I&W are developing and connecting (data-driven) instruments for this purpose with the aim of integrally and cost-effectively uniting common policy goals, content and working methods in a single policy approach. 

Social Impact of smart, sustainable urbanization , Ecorys

Research firm Ecorys conducted a 2021 exploration of the social impact of Smart and Sustainable Urbanization. The qualitative and quantitative exploration revealed the usefulness and necessity of adopting an integrated, data-driven approach that is committed to smart infill in cities. It also showed that the realization of social added value in a city is pre-eminently a combination of domains in which investments in, for example, mobility or energy benefit the spatial domain.

Smart and Sustainable Urbanization, Goudappel et al.

In a follow-up to the Ecorys report, KAW Architects, Ecorys and Goudappel demonstrate concretely that targeted, cohesive and coordinated investments in the pillars of physical space, mobility and energy offer both social and financial added value. For three neighborhood/neighborhood cases in Zwolle alone, it has been calculated that an additional investment of approximately €29.9 million aimed at smart infill development compared to expansion can lead to positive social effects of approximately €60.2 million. Based on the same research methodology for finding densification locations with potential for mobility renewal, the three neighborhood/neighborhood cases in Rotterdam-Alexander district show respective figures of 80.7 million euro and 134.3 million euro.

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