Jakarta, through Smart Change, together with the European Union, brings their newest collaboration: Jakarta Future City Hub. Jakarta Future City Hub is designed to empower the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Jakarta by presenting an innovation hub between the Jakarta Provincial Government and start-up innovators. This innovation hub is expected to accelerate smart city innovation by connecting policy makers with innovators. It’s the beginning of developing a start-up ecosystem in Jakarta that has a big impact on the citizens.

Not only Jakarta, start-ups and governments from cities and countries across the world already showed their collaborations that come to fruition. What innovations do they develop? Read the success story below.

CityTech RUHR: Germany’s Largest International Start-up Competition

CityTech RUHR was initiated to address urban problems in the Ruhr Metropolis area: Bochum, Bottrop and Hagen. These cities are looking for innovations and digital solutions to be applied in various aspects such as mobility, shopping, sports, and leisure. CityTech RUHR is expected to bring fresh ideas that can be implemented easily. A total of 100 international start-ups from 27 countries participated in this competition to solve the specific problems of cities in the Ruhr Metropolis area. The three selected finalists then underwent a trial phase until the projects were ready to be implemented in the three cities.

Digitizing and Automating Building Compliance Checks in Bochum

A start-up from London, Kyanite360, together with the City of Bochum are trying to solve the problem of the City of Bochum that wants to develop a digital platform to automate a BIM-based planning and building regulations compliance control process for building permit applications. This compliance check works like a spell checker, but for building design.

The results of this project prove that building compliance checks can be done digitally using BIM-data. In the future, it’s possible to make the overall building construction permit process more efficient. Real estate companies and the city government will certainly be the beneficiary parties through the implementation of this project.

Utilizing Big Data for Revitalization in the City of Bottrop

The City of Bottrop and Israeli start-up Placense collaborated to analyze citizens and visitors (catchment, footfall, movement, purposes) to determine the revitalization of the city. Through this collaboration, both the start-up and the government are able to highlight Bottrop residents shopping trends as well as analyze why and when residents from surrounding cities are coming to Bottrop. The data collected can be used by the city government as a basis for making decisions that aim to increase the number of visitors in the city center to strengthen the local economy and leisure activities.

Creating a Sustainable City with Hagen Heroes App

The City of Hagen is looking for digital solutions to encourage its residents to use public transportation instead of driving private vehicles. Together with Changers, the City of Hagen developed the Hagen Heroes App that encourages citizens to walk, cycle, take public transportation, and participate in healthy and sustainable activities. Users of the app who participate in reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will get Hero Points which can be exchanged for discount vouchers, tree planting, and exciting raffles. For this pilot project, Changers collaborated with the city government of Hagen, Hagen Agentur, which supports business and innovation in Hagen, and Mark-E, the local energy provider.

Zipline: Drones That Deliver Blood

Zipline is an American company that focuses on the delivery service of medical products. In the delivery process, Zipline uses automated drones that they design, develop and operate themselves. In 2016, Zipline with its drones delivered blood to 21 hospitals in Rwanda, Africa. As a result, the trip that had to be taken for four hours by road was successfully reduced to 20 minutes, using a drone that went up to 100 km per hour. Not only delivering blood, Zipline also delivers vaccines and medicines in the Rwanda region.

When the Government of Rwanda finally collaborated with Zipline, stakeholders from various government institutions (health, ICT, aviation, and infrastructure) focused on building solid collaboration in establishing appropriate policies and regulatory frameworks for drone deliveries. The successful collaboration between Zipline and the Government of Rwanda can’t be separated from the Zipline strategy: they didn’t only introduce products and services, but also showed their innovative business model. Instead of selling drones, Zipline chooses to sell its services for a fee, commonly referred to as the Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) model.

Hackathon Jakarta: Jakarta Open Data Challenge

Jakarta has also held a hackathon to gather brilliant ideas. Through this hackathon, Jakarta is looking for new innovations that can make it easier for citizens to access information from the government. This program certainly attracted a lot of application developers because the 200 quotas were immediately booked only five days after registration opening. As a result of this program, Jakarta Open Data has finally come to fruition. It’s an integrated data portal that presents data from all Units in the Jakarta Provincial Government, which are still used to this day.

A start-up’s ability is not only limited to selling products and services. Start-ups can also offer solutions to solve problems. Especially with the dynamic characteristics of start-ups, it makes them more flexible when collaborating with other parties. With Future City Hub, it’s expected to be a starting point of a collaboration from national and international talents that can accelerate smart city innovation in Jakarta. By combining the strengths of start-ups and governments, these two institutions can develop solutions that are capable of moving at the required speed, scale, and depth.