City of Trondheim

Smart City solution

Trondheim is a city with a purpose to generate innovation and to use it as a vehicle for the systemic transformation towards a smart, sustainable and resilient future. In November 2021, it became one of the finalists of the 2021 the first-ever European Rising Innovative City award of the European Commission. This follows a range of other recognitions, such as that in 2019 Trondheim was recognized the most innovative city in Norway by the Ministry of Local Governmentand Modernization. The same year it was awarded the Geneva UN Charter Centre of Excellence on SDG City Transitions status by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.

Trondheim is action-oriented, future-oriented and geared towards tangible opportunities to deliver a change in Trondheim, Norway and beyond. The focus is on creating tangible opportunities for Sustainable Value Creation, linking the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to local opportunities, actions and innovative sources of finance, to accelerate progress towards SDGs and to deliver “net-zero” cities and communities.

The Centre for Sustainable Development of Trondheim invests in developing, testing and replicating smart and sustainable city solutions in Norway and beyond. It works on improving access and availability of smart urban data, most notably by using the Norwegian Taxonomy and ontology, and using data about city smartness and sustainability to report on the progress towards SDGs.

Together with Smartbyene, and based on the open source platform Decidim, it has developed the National Platform for Citizen Participation  to improve citizen engagement and enable effective citizen participation in decision-making processes.

In 2021 Trondheim developed a Voluntary Local Review guided by the Four Pillars of Sustainable Value Creation, which aims to generate opportunities to direct public and private partners towards mutually interesting and innovative smart city projects. The city’s biggest smart city project to date is the Horizon 2020 +CityxChange which aims to create positive energy blocks to help solve the world’s energy challenge.

Trondheim is developing, testing and replicating smart city solutions to generate opportunities for Sustainable Value Creation. It enables better implementation of local policies, programmes, plans and projects across various areas: energy, transport and mobility, climate, supports further implementation of the Roadmap for Smart and Sustainable Cities and Communities in Norway, and ultimately the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with its 17 SDGs.

Trondheim has developed multiple partnerships with a variety of public, private and third-sector partners in order to support the city’s transition towards a smart sustainable future. Trondheim has a close relationship with various research entities, especially the Norwegian University of Technology (NTNU) and SINTEF, which provides the city a long-term access to research and innovation , allows  developing, testing and replicating innovative solutions at speed,   making the city smarter and more sustainable and reinforcing its status as a knowledge and innovation hub in Norway.

It plays a critical role in coordinating the work of the Network of Excellence (Bærekraftsløftet) and collaborates with UNECE on a joint project “Improved Sustainability of 17 Norwegian Cities”, the International Telecommunications Union, UN-Habitat and other UN organizations and agencies under the United United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC); large and small businesses: Sanska, KS and IOTA, Ducky and the Church of Norway.

Contact

Øyvnd S. Tanum - Head of Smart City
Agata Krause - Head of the 2030 Agenda and International Relations at The Centre for Sustainable Development
Kristin Solhaug Næss -Advisor on Citizen Participation, Chief Executive Staff