International Exchange in Practice: Portuguese Delegation at URBIS Learns from PROMOTER Results
Sharing good practice must not stop at the borders of a single region. That is the core idea DEX Innovation Centre has long championed. At the URBIS Smart City Fair in Brno, we therefore took the opportunity to connect with an important Portuguese delegation. Our aim was to present the achievements of the PROMOTER project and show how smaller European municipalities can effectively implement innovative green solutions.
URBIS has traditionally served as a platform connecting innovation hubs, technology companies and public administration. Thanks to excellent cooperation with the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Portugal, namely with H.E. Ambassador Kateřina Bocianová, we organised a bilateral networking meeting with a delegation of the intermunicipal community CIM Cávado. This Portuguese organisation, representing six municipalities with more than 400,000 inhabitants, faces very similar challenges in regional mobility and energy as the PROMOTER partners.
When Czech practice becomes European inspiration
During the working meeting, we presented the town of Bystřice to the delegation, represented by Joao Luís Silva (First Secretary of CIM Cávado) and Tiago Figueiredo Ferreira (intermunicipal transport coordinator), as a working example of rapidly putting European goals into practice. We focused on two main topics:
- Smart mobility: The BysBus demand-responsive transport system, an ideal solution for rural areas where conventional scheduled buses fail both economically and environmentally.
- Data management: Using the e-manažer software to identify energy savings, an essential prerequisite for building energy communities.
We also showed our Portuguese colleagues the synergies with our other projects, such as PilotInnCities and BE-READY, which address the adaptation of cities to extreme heat. Portugal is strategically important to us, and not only for mutual inspiration. Together with our partners from Sintra, Portugal, we are currently working hard on preparing the PROMOTER Final Conference, which will take place this November. The meeting in Brno was therefore another step towards connecting local innovation ecosystems across Europe and showing that the challenges of mobility and decarbonisation know no borders.