Cisco and City of Amsterdam Expand Urban EcoMap Program Globally to Address Environmental Concerns

AMSTERDAM, Cisco and the city of Amsterdam today announced the rollout of Urban EcoMap, an Internet-based tool that enables cities around the world to provide smarter climate change information for their citizens. A city can use Urban EcoMap to create awareness among its residents of the impact of carbon emissions on their urban environment. It provides information on carbon emissions from transportation, energy and waste among neighborhoods, organized by district, and delivers tips on ways to reduce a resident’s carbon footprint.
Facts/Highlights:

* The application is an extension of the Urban EcoMap launched in May 2009 in the city of San Francisco. The Amsterdam version of the Urban EcoMap will be progressively expanded in the upcoming year with real-time information, which might also be linked to data from other agencies.
* Urban EcoMap in Amsterdam will empower citizens to move from collective intelligence to collective action by providing emissions information on a neighborhood level, organized by local and comparable common boundaries like ZIP codes and districts.
* Citizens will be able to view their neighborhood data through visual displays in the areas of transportation, energy and waste. This information empowers neighborhoods to identify and take specific actions to fight climate change using approaches such as alternative-fuel vehicle ownership, recycling, and reducing household energy use.
* Citizens will then be able to make decisions to help decrease the carbon footprint of their geographic regions, their particular district, and their city. They will be also able to share their climate actions with others via social networking. Comparisons are available between Amsterdam’s neighborhoods, and also enabled between the neighborhoods in Amsterdam and San Francisco.
* Urban EcoMap provides information on carbon emissions from transportation, energy and waste among neighborhoods, organized by district. As part of the Cisco® Connected Urban Development (CUD) program, the Urban EcoMap pilot is a cooperative initiative between the city of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Innovation Motor (AIM) and Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), the company’s strategic global consulting arm.

Additional Information:

* Urban EcoMap is part of the global Urban Services Platform approach toward which visionary cities and the information and communications technology (ICT) industry are moving. Urban EcoMap provides real-time environmental intelligence to enable citizens, communities, cities, countries and businesses alike to make smart ecological decisions and to develop policies that improve the sustainability of cities. Through this comprehensive view of eco-data, we can now take a global “pulse” of the eco-health of our planet.
* Cisco has collaborated on the Urban EcoMap program with industry, government and academic leaders, such as Arup, CH2MHill, NASA, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, the city and county of San Francisco, and most recently the city of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Innovation Motor (AIM) and Amsterdam Smart City (ASC).
* The Urban EcoMap pilot is one of a number of landmark projects that have resulted from Cisco’s participation in the Clinton Global Initiative and its pledge to reduce carbon emissions. Launched in 2006, CUD is a public-private partnership aimed at addressing the unique environmental problems facing urban areas and at developing ICT solutions for cities around the world.
* Cisco’s Smart+Connected Communities initiative helps transform physical communities to connected communities and achieve economic, social and environmental sustainability. Cisco works with customers, from idea to execution, leveraging vertical solutions built on the network as an open integrated platform, a broad ecosystem of partners and innovative business models to change how communities are designed, built, managed and renewed.
* Smart+Connected Communities solutions provide a “Community+Connect” experience for residents and business as well as a “Community+Exchange” for those who manage the community.

Availability:

* Urban EcoMap is scheduled to be available for public use by citizens of Amsterdam on Dec. 1.