The final conference of the CEKOM project for smart cities takes place at the Croatian Cultural Centre Sušak, where the results of three-year research and development made by project partners will be presented.

The key activities of the CEKOM project for smart cities were aimed at solving the challenges that the cities encounter, such as managing traffic and traffic flows, preserving the environment and managing natural resources, managing utility infrastructure and improving various life elements – security, social inclusion, sustainable tourism and many others.

In their opening speeches, the participants were welcomed by Nenad Antolović, director of the company SMART RI, Marko Filipović, mayor of the City of Rijeka and Vedran Kružić, director of the Regional development agency Prigoda.

Nenad Antolović emphasised the success of the project and thanked all the partners who took part. “During three years, within the project, we worked on the development of 36 products and services, a large number of online meetings were held, especially during the pandemic, which did not stop the course of the project, almost 100 scientific and professional articles were published, numerous conferences, international gatherings, round tables organised and very well attended, more than 30 project presentations were held for the interested public. Moreover, I would like to point out that we included citizens in this project, more precisely 1,500 of them participated in project activities through, for example, the Urban Laboratory, the selection of the visual identity of the multifunctional info point, as well as in various educational programmes and conferences. Also, more than 50 units of local and regional self-government joined the “Smart Cities and Municipalities” workshop cycle, and we are also happy to see the interest expressed by business entities that would like to be involved in similar projects in the future,” said Antolović.

Rijeka Mayor Marko Filipović expressed his satisfaction with the inclusion of a significant number of large IT companies in this project, as well as the participation of utility companies from Rijeka. “Great efforts were made by all project actors, and the ultimate goal was to offer solutions accessible to citizens. We are now awaiting the implementation phase of the ideas developed under this project, and I hope that they will find their application in our daily lives”, said the mayor, adding that the European Union in its seven-year development plan focusses on IT and digitisation.

As emphasised by the director of the Regional development agency Prigoda, Vedran Kružić, the County of Primorje – Gorski Kotar did not formally make part of the CEKOM project, since 2018 and the foundation of Prigoda, cooperation had been achieved with a number CEKOM partners, which also had contributed to the promotion of the SMART RI project throughout the county. “Products such as these that were developed within this project are very important to us and need to be applied in our everyday life because they will contribute to raising the quality of life in our cities and municipalities. I expect that a number of solutions will emerge from the devised pilot projects or prototypes that we as citizens will consume through the services of our utility companies, that is, in our private time if they are projects of private sector companies,” emphasised Kružić.

Among others, the conference was attended by representatives of the Central Finance and Contracting Agency (SAFU) for EU programmes and projects Nikolina Štefuljak, Petra Vasilj, Maja Dujmović and Marko Lukač from the Project Implementation Control Office.

The CEKOM project is the largest development project in Croatia in the field of information and communication solutions aimed at improving the quality of life of citizens, and is implemented within the Operational Programme Competitiveness and Cohesion 2014-2020.

The total project value amounts to EUR 19,859,497.53 (HRK 149,631,384.15), of which EUR 12,656,118.62 (HRK 95,357,525.75) is co-financed by the EU.

The project promoter is the company SMART RI, and the project implementation period is from 1 March 2020 to 1 March 2023.