Eilat and France’s Nice launch joint smart cities initiative
Municipalities of the 2 beachfront tourist destinations to collaborate on project addressing urban woes in health, infrastructure, transportation
Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.
The cities of Eilat, in southern Israel, and Nice, in southern France, on Monday announced the launch of a joint, two-year initiative aimed at using smart technologies to solve common municipal problems.
A 10-member team from each city will look for solutions to current and future urban woes in the fields of health, infrastructure, transportation, energy, and tourism.
The program will be headed by the Eilat Tech Center, which operates innovation programs for academic/research institutions, governments, municipalities, industry brands and investment/capital funds. The center is a part of the Arieli Capital group, a US holding investment firm with offices in Israel and New York.
The Eilat-Nice program is set to launch at the end of February, and from then on, the two teams will hold monthly talks to discuss their progress. In September 2020, the teams will meet in Eilat to present their proposals, and the final projects will be laid out in 2021 in Nice.
Both Nice and Eilat are coastal cities with large tourism industries, although Nice is significantly larger. The initiative will address problems affecting both cities, and the solutions will be applicable to other municipalities, said Or Haviv of Arieli Capital.
In December 2019, the Eilat Tech Center said it was hosting seven startups to take part in the first accelerator program for Italian startups in Israel. The firms work in a variety of sectors including health, smart mobility, food tech and clean tech, and will be based in Eilat from January until March 2020.
The Times of Israel Community.