RUGGEDISED has been going on for 18 months and a first project report was the occasion to review what has been going on in Rotterdam, and it's a lot !
When drawing up the initial RUGGEDISED proposal, the idea of the Rotterdam partners was that the building company of Heart of South would be the best possible partner to develop the thermal grid. They would know best the progress of the building activities and would be best in coordinating and planning all necessary RUGGEDISED activities. After a short period of time partners concluded that for the benefit of RUGGEDISED it would be better if Eneco, instead of the building company partner Ballast Nedam, would take over the developing tasks of the smart thermal grid. Ballast Nedam will remain partner in RUGGEDISED, however, their grant will be re-allocated to Eneco and the municipality of Rotterdam. During this intensive and learning transformative process all partners were able to ‘be on the same page’ and to agree on mutual goals for the RUGGEDISED project.
André Houtepen, RUGGEDISED project manager, City of Rotterdam
PROJECT TIMING:
Month 20 / 60
BIGGEST SUCCESS TO DATE
Finding out the best way to cooperate when different interests are at stake
BIGGEST CHALLENGE
Keep on track of all partners in a rapidly changing city landscape
The developments made in the smart solutions of RUGGEDISED have to follow the developments in the demonstration area of Heart of South. They have to run parallel. Because of the high costs of the backbone it was not realistic to connect the Swimming Pool and the Arts Centre to the smart thermal grid as initially planned. In the area development programme a hotel and cinema were added. They are nearby the buildings of ICC and the exhibition centre of Ahoy. RUGGEDISED took this opportunity to design an alternative and an even better smart thermal grid than was proposed to the European Commission. A smart thermal grid ‘designed to grow’. At this moment the business case for the smart thermal grid is known in detail and further engineered. Agreements are being made on dividing the financial deficit of the grid in the beginning of the project and on sharing the expected benefits at the end. While construction of the International Congress Centre begins after the summer, Eneco and their partners are ready to start realizing the smart thermal grid.
Partners RET, municipality of Rotterdam and Eneco made progress in designing and studying the smart electric grid. A feasibility study on the needed capacity of DC cables and a battery is being carried out. RET, together with Erasmus University, is working on the dynamic route-planning software to optimize routes of the electric buses. Instead of a tender for 6, as was initially proposed, a tender for 55 electric buses is opened. Of course the development of the smart electric grid goes hand in hand with the area development of the Heart of South. The smart electric grid is also designed to grow in close cooperation with the area developments.
The development of the data and ICT solutions is ahead of schedule. The first proof of concept (the first out of three) regarding the development of the 3D City operations model has been finalised. It demonstrated that the model works. The first results of the second proof of concept, which started in summer 2017, are tested. The goal is to test the flexibility of the generic developed 3D city platform in order to meet the information needs of potential users. The 3D city model is designed to grow as well. More and more datasets are input for the model.