Boosting the technical and non-technical skills and competences of smart cities technicians and engineers - SMACITE

Smart cities are not only a trend but a necessity of the modern world, as well as the key to the future. To speed up the creation of Smart Cities and embrace the related technology-enabled infrastructures, the required skills must be developed. Companies should be given incentives to train their personnel by setting up public training programmes and encouraging collaboration with academia and industry. However, there is a lack of education and training programs specialized in the domain of Smart Cities that combine an adaptive blend of technical and non-technical skills and competencies, which are essential for the technicians and engineers designing, deploying, and operating sustainable Smart Cities.

The SMACITE project aims to address this skills gap by designing and testing a vocational education and training program. The program will use a novel and multi-disciplinary curriculum combining digital skills on Smart Cities enabling technologies with soft, entrepreneurial, and green skills.

The expected project results are:

• A Smart Cities competences map and ESCO-compliant Smart Cities job profiles.
• A Smart Cities curriculum, combining both technical and non-technical skills and competences, and promoting personalized learning pathways.
• Learning resources for Smart Cities enabling technologies and for building the soft, entrepreneurship and green skills of Smart Cities technicians and Engineers.
• A diagnostic tool to identify personalized learning pathways.
• A MOOC for Smart Cities enabling technologies.
• Virtual Worlds for building the soft, green and entrepreneurship skills of Smart Cities technicians and engineers.

The main project beneficiaries are Smart Cities technicians and engineers, either from the public sector (i.e. municipalities) or enterprises providing Smart Cities solutions, as well as HEI and VET students interested in Smart Cities.

The SMACITE consortium brings together 12 organizations from Greece, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, and Belgium that represent different stakeholders that share a common vision: Higher Education Institutions, Vocational Education and Training providers, Associations of IT and Technology Enterprises, Public Sector Organizations, and a Certification Body.

During the project’s pre-kickoff meeting, which took place online (June 8th, 2022), the partners discussed their involvement in the project and the expertise they bring and agreed on a concrete action plan for the first three months to ensure its smooth start. SMACITE is a 3-year project (01/06/2022 - 31/05/2025) coordinated by the University of Patras (Greece) and co-funded by the European Union (Project Number: Project Number: 101052513).