Innovation-in-Europes-Cities_Bloomberg-Mayors-Challenge1

WinnersWarsaw1,715,500Population (2012)0.08%Population growth per annum(2003-2012)€26,100GDP per capita (2013)4.54%Annual GDP growth (2003-2013)Winning proposalPolishOfficial languageDirectlyelected mayor(four-year term)Metropolitan governanceVirtual Warsaw: giving the visuallyimpaired greater access to the cityVirtual Warsaw aims to give the visually impairedgreater freedom of movement across the city,particularly in the use of public transport andpublic facilities. Thousands of Bluetooth LowEnergy (BLE) beacons will be installed aroundthe Polish capital to provide indoor and outdoormicro-navigation by communicating locationdata to smartphones. Using technology toimprove universal access at an individual levelhighlights the city’s capacity to make uniformpublic transport more specific to the needs ofits users. This freedom of movement is designedto reduce unemployment amongst the city’sblind population, currently at 81%. Warsawwill provide an application program interface(APIs make it easier for technologies to ‘talk’ toeach other) to increase the potential for furtherinnovation by residents and businesses aroundthe infrastructure. The project borrows technologygenerally used by the private sector at asignificantly smaller scale, scaling it up to coveran entire city.Since joining the EU in 2004, Poland has movedtowards policy and economic convergence withthe rest of Europe. While real GDP per capita isstill catching up with western European countries,it more than doubled between 1989 and 2013,following the revolutions that toppled communismin central and eastern Europe. In 2012, Poland’sR&D investment budget was 0.9% of GDP, whilethe EU average was 2%, with only Finland andSweden above 3%, the European 2020 target.Poland is the only EU member to have escapedrecession following the 2008 financial crisis and hasidentified innovation as critical to further closingthe wage gap with richer nations and reachingsustainable income growth for the bottom 40%of its population. To achieve this, Poland plans toincrease its research spend to 1.7% of GDP as partof its Europe 2020 target, but also recognises theneed to use government funds to strategically igniteits lagging private sector. Poland plans to use €10billion in EU structural funds, upgraded researchinfrastructure and international partnerships tostimulate commercially oriented innovation. Aswages rise, Poland’s low-cost manufacturing modelneeds to be replaced with more skilled andproductive jobs to remain competitive.VisionVirtual Warsaw is an ambitious plan to use Bluetoothtechnology to make the Polish capital moreaccessible to the visually impaired. Micro-navigationbeacons will communicate changes in theurban environment to increase safety and improveaccess to public transport, leisure facilities likeparks and theatres, and public buildings. Careertraining and employer awareness programmes willfurther improve the independence and employabilityof people with visual impairments; currently81% of the blind population is without work. Theinnovation fits with the adopted Europe 2020Strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growthby reducing the degree of social exclusion whilefostering new skills.ImpactThe city hopes more than half of visually impairedresidents will make use of Virtual Warsaw. Reduceddependency will not only liberate citizens tomore freely access Warsaw, it is likely to reducethe burden of care, enabling family helpers orvolunteers to access employment opportunitiesthat otherwise wouldn’t be available to them.Importantly, the project also plans to improvethe quality of e-government services by adoptingWCAG 2.0, which aims to increase the robustnessof assistive technologies, and create a centralsupport line for the visually impaired. For TomaszPactwa, Director of Welfare and Social Projects, itis about teaching employers to “trust the element ofself-sufficiency for blind people,” allowing visuallyimpaired individuals to move, enjoy and operatemore freely in Warsaw “in a more holistic way”.ImplementationA successful indoor pilot with blind users in anadministrative building has already demonstratedthe feasibility of the scheme. The city will install thetechnology in public transport, public buildings,leisure and cultural sites across the city, each ofwhich will be preceded by a smaller scale pilot andextensive testing with users. The technology willthen be tailored to suit the significantly differentoperating environments, which include indoor andoutdoor, churches and theatres.TransferabilityWarsaw then hopes to use what it has learnt tohelp other cities ensure accessibility for peoplewith visual disabilities. This includes combiningtechnology with employment and skills training todevelop best practice. The city will also provide anopen API to enable local organisations to createother uses for the BLE infrastructure. Witnessingthe government spending more on innovation isan open invitation to encourage the tertiary andprivate sectors to invest their own time and effort.In the future, Pactwa believes that “anybody who42