The City of Dortmund in Germany plans to co-manage a new data hub company – DOdata – with the local energy utility, DEW21. DOdata will combine sensor technology (Internet-of-Things) and intelligent data services in a platform approach to analyze and link non-personal data to create smart city solutions. It plans to build on existing services and create new ones in areas such as intelligent parking management, supply line leakage detection, garbage collection, and air quality measurement.
The company will be jointly managed by Dr. Jan Fritz Rettberg, head of the city’s Information & Innovation Office and Sven Baumgarte, head of Strategy and Transformation at DEW21.
Heike Heim, chairman of the DEW21 executive board, said, “data literacy [is an] essential building block of our business strategy, and the founding of DOdata is another important step in our evolution from a traditional energy and water utility to a modern utility.”
The next steps will include building the data infrastructure of the city, mobility, and energy agencies.
Dortmund’s mayor, Ullrich Sierau, commented, “I am delighted that we have created a center of excellence for urban data management in our city, DOdata, which marks an important milestone on the way to becoming [a smart city]. DOdata thrives on the ability to combine, network and analyze data generated in different ways and enriched by other sources in order to derive solutions for various fields of application.”
DEW21 is an original member of Allianz Smart City Dortmund. The collaborative group of private and public sector organizations and academia was set up in 2016 to help Dortmund become smarter.
