fourLINK Blog

Smart Cities in Croatia

5th February 2016

As we work extensively with helping smart cities develop in sustainable ways we wanted to share some experience from this field.  The aim of this article is to explain and demonstrate some new insights and what is happening in the development of Smart Cities in Croatia.

The overall findings of the contemporary city development in Croatia is that it is implementing the result of what new technology development brings to the world. In Croatia it is mainly IT development which is driving the smart cities concept. All the cities have their internet platforms and this is the first stage of the smart cities concept development. The cities which develop in terms of being more of a “smart” city have in general a more intuitive internet platform. These platforms are more closely corresponding to the citizen’s needs, and are linked to the services that the city provides.

The second stage of the development of the smart cities concept is using new technologies in everyday public activities. 

A few examples of such activities are:

The green biofuel in modern public vehicles (the articles linked here are written in Croatian)

The whole central area in the cities are becoming hot spots which is being further steered by the Ministry of Tourism.

The recent announcement of IT services for tourists and citizens in Dubrovnik, is the largest smart cities pilot project in Croatia and is worth about 1.5million Kunas (roughly €200,000). Led by the Croatian telecom leader Hrvatski Telekom, the project will make it easier for citizens and tourists to navigate, and will improve traffic safety and energy efficiency within the historic city.

The City of Pula is developing its tourist offer based on contemporary IT development. 

In Karlovac, the city has created the solar trees for Wifi access and device charging on solar concept in the city centre, where the goal of the project is not only about connectivity, but also to raise awareness amongst the citizens about the possibilities of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency.

The initiatives for more IT development in the smart cities concept in Croatia are preliminary driven by three factors:

The first is the demand for harmonizing with EU standards, the tool here being the applications for EU funding, written by the NGO, public institutions or SMEs.

The second is to develop the smart cities concept fuelled by the demand of global competition.

The third is to develop the smart cities concept so that it provides more control and connectivity to the citizens.

We are working closely with the teams and are steering the idea about greater networking on such a subject and are looking forward to new cross-fertilisation of ideas that the next smart cities conference will bring next month in Croatia. This we see as an opportunity to hear about the achievement that Croatian cities have reached up to this point. .

The 17th March 2016 is a key date for our diary!

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