A delegation from the City of Hamburg held meetings with the local authorities of Canberra (ACT) and Melbourne from 25-31 August 2023. The delegation consisted of:
- Thomas Jacob and Sabine Schubbe, Senate Chancellery, European Affairs, International Projects
- Thomas Eichhorn and Dr. Michael Fischer, Agency für Spatial Information and Surveying
- Wolfgang Hoefs, New Mobility Solutions.
The activity was jointly funded by the Hamburg City Council and the IURC project within the competitive fund award. It included participation at the International Mobility Summit 2023 held in Melbourne. The mission was supported by Prof. Bruce Wilson (RMIT), coordinator for the IURC activities in Australia.
Impact in Canberra
During several meetings with ACT specialists, the Hamburg team and their hosts identified clear and active tasks and challenges to be tackled together. Hamburg agreed to a staff exchange in order to execute a professional “deep dive” in technical exchange and – estimated – common and shared development of solutions in the field of Digital Twin. Hamburg – running its own city-BIM-unit – agreed to connect its specialists with experts from the University of Canberra in order to adapt solutions to each other. Mutual invitations were issued for upcoming conferences and ACT and Hamburg agreed to send participants. In 2024 (Sep 24-26) the INTERGEO EXPO and CONFERENCE – the international geospatial event of the year will take place in Stuttgart/Germany. Hamburg contacted the organizer and reserved a spot for an ACT/Melbourne professional contribution (minimum: keynote) and additionally a combined staff exchange in Hamburg. A Hamburg specialist (Hamburg State Agency for Geoinformation & Surveying) is ready to be sent to ACT in 2024, to exchange technologies and approaches, as well as to identify gaps and solutions on both sides.
Impact in Melbourne
It was agreed to exchange the indicators for Climate Action developed in each case, especially during the upcoming Staff Exchange, and to present plans and projects to each other and, if necessary, to evaluate them in order to ultimately achieve better results.
With regard to digitalization, the categorization and use of urban data (urban data management) in Hamburg was of great interest to Melbourne, especially the utilization for specialist departments. Melbourne is interested in exchanging experiences on Urban Data Portal, Cockpit, Open Data Portal. Here, cooperation is promised within the framework of the above-mentioned staff exchange. On the other side, Melbourne has developed detailed KPIs on the SDGs, which is of great interest to Hamburg. Melbourne is working with Los Angeles and Sydney on a dashboard for the SDGs, which may be an area of cooperation with Hamburg.
Hamburg’s coordinator for the “City Science Initiative – SCI” funded by the EU has been linked up with Prof. Sarah Bell from Melbourne University, who has a similar function. It was agreed to hold a joint videoconference with counterparts from Hamburg and Melbourne before the end of 2023, after topics, problems and approaches to solutions had been described in advance.
