Senscity, which has developed a climate change impact assessment platform that informs investment decisions on a city’s green spaces, is representing Australia at the Arcadis City of 2030 Accelerator program in Amsterdam.

The Australian start-up joins nine other start-ups from around the world at Arcadis’ Digital Innovation Hub. Arcadis is a Netherlands-based global design, engineering and management consultancy for natural and built assets.

The two new initiatives from Arcadis’ Digital Innovation Hub include the three-month Arcadis City of 2030 Accelerator, powered by Techstars, which kicked off on 11 March with 10 selected start-ups; and the Digital Studio Incubator, the company’s internal product and service development group, starting on 1 April. The hub and its two programs are part of Arcadis’ city-centric vision and strategy of continued digital innovation and growth.

“We have to establish both internal and external initiatives to identify and carefully grow ‘the new’. We are serious about being a digital frontrunner in our industry and therefore we have to develop certain value propositions ourselves, as well as co-create and buy into what happens at the frontier through early stage ventures,” comments Patrick van Hoof, global director innovation at Arcadis.

Senscity’s climate change impact assessment platform leverages the power of the Internet of Things to remotely collect data from urban green spaces in near real time, providing valuable information to understand a city’s pressure points and monitoring the solutions used by the city to adapt to these stresses. Senscity will empower decision makers with the data they need to plan, design and build our future cities.

The ‘City of 2030’ theme relates to Arcadis’ strategic vision, which is based on the fact that the vast majority of people will live their lives in cities in the next decade. Arcadis is perfectly positioned to not only play a role in those future cities, but also to shape them.

The Digital Innovation Hub provides an environment and operating model suitable for exploration and experimentation, benefitting the internal product development team and the start-ups.

For the City of 2030 Accelerator program, Arcadis aims to contribute extensive subject matter expertise through mentorship and the involvement of its broader ecosystem of clients and partners.

Arcadis and Techstars will help the startup teams rapidly iterate concepts to grow their business, as well as prepare for fundraising and Demo Day to showcase their ideas towards May-end.

Selected from a pool of hundreds of applications received from across 50 countries, the ten early stage start-ups are focused on developing solutions around several city-related themes including urban planning, mobility, resiliency, citizen-city engagement, sustainable building, housing shortage, co-living, field collaboration, and workplace wellness.

The core technologies of their various solutions, which focus on revolutionising how people live, work and travel in cities, include artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, parametric design software, task management software, and GIS.

The 10 start-ups include Urban Data Eye (Spain); ModelMe3D (Netherlands); Iomob (Spain); Etalyc (United States); Senscity (Australia); CAALA (Germany); City Flag (United States); Kndrd CoLiving (United States); Mela Works (United Kingdom); and Pause (United States).

Image: L-R: Shaun Burriss, CTO Senscity, Patrick van Hoof, Global Director Innovation Arcadis, Joseph Glesta, CEO Senscity