Umeå is a fast growing city in Northern Sweden with progressive and environmentally-friendly citizens. Located 600 km north of Stockholm, the 11th largest city in Sweden has a subarctic climate, with short and fairly warm summers, but lengthy and freezing winters.

Umeå is a centre of education, technical and medical research in Sweden, with two universities. It counts 123,.000 inhabitants with two-thirds of the population born outside the municipality, and around one tenth from outside of Sweden. Umeå citizens are among Sweden’s most educated, and are known to be very environmental engaged. Smart city thinking is at the core of the City of Umeå’s overall vision of continued social, economic and environmentally sustainable growth. RUGGEDISED will facilitate a unified ‘smart district’, which is underpinned by planned regeneration and new developments, existing smart city capabilities and committed public and private sector investments.

In RUGGEDISED, Umeå focused on an Innovation District that is situated immediately to the east of Umeå city centre, the University city area, which includes a mix of residential, academic and research facilities from two universities, a regional hospital, and community, recreational and commercial buildings. The neighbourhood is characterised by its young, student-influenced, population with 40, 000 daily visitors. As such, the neighbourhood is one of the least car-dependent neighbourhoods in Umeå.  Amongst the smart solutions implemented, the RUGGEDISED project worked with peak load variation management, shared use of energy and a smart, open- data city decision platform. www.greenumea.se/ruggedised