On 21 smartest cities in the world, Heraklion

Despite the problems and concerns, there are aspects of contemporary Greek reality offering optimism

.And when these aspects are directly related to Heraklion, Crete, the joy they bring to all of us is twofold. The city of Heraklion was named as one of the 21 "smarter cities in the world" for 2012 by the Intelligent Organization Communities Forum, based in New York. The announcement of this year's list with "smarter cities" held last Friday by the founder of ICF Zakarila Louis, an event held in Eindhoven, Holland. Each year, the ICF identifies an issue which is the criterion for the nominations and natural graduation of the candidate cities. Central theme of this evaluation was the existence of the urban ecosystem of innovation in information and communications technology. Innovation is one of the five key parameters to comprehensively address the ICF when it considers the candidate communities (community within the meaning of the settlement) from around the world to present the awards. Even greater was the importance of innovation in this year's award, which, under the theme-criterion was to determine how "smart" communities create dynamic and developing innovative ecosystem based technology in computing and communications. Altogether, the honorees communities in 2012 is 21, of which only 4 from Europe, while the remaining 10 are from North America, 3 from Latin America and 4 from Asia. More importantly for the award of Heraklion is the fact that nearly half of communities, in fact 10, have won again in the past and only 11 appear in the list for the first time - among them, and Heraklion. Further, the list of " intelligent "communities for 2012 is as follows: From the U.S., Arlington, Virginia, in Austin, Texas, Columbus, Ohio area, the Dakota, Minnesota, in Danville, Virginia and Riverside California. From Canada comes four communities, St. John in New Brunswick, the city of Quebec, Winnipeg and Strantfornt in Ontario. In the American continent are three other winners, the Durango in Mexico, Curitiba in Vrazlilia and Tuxtla Gutierrez to Mexico. In Europe, apart from Heraklion are also Frankfurt in Germany, Barcelona in Spain and Oulu, Finland. Finally, the list closes with two communities of Australia (Ipswich in Queensland and Prospect in South Australia) and two in Taiwan (Taichung City, New Taipei). The evaluation is annual. Cities from around the world presenting a petition infrastructure and activities under the specific questions posed by the remarkable organization. The evaluation will continue, and January 15 will be announced the seven top cities in the annual meeting of the Pacific Telecommunications Council (www.ptc.org) in Honolulu. The circle closes in New York on June 8, at the annual meeting of Building the Broadband Economy (www.icfsummit.com), which will announce the top city. 12selidi The petition submitted to the agency ICF drafted by the Head of Information and Communications K. Mochianaki and partner Lazaro Agapidi Municipality with the support of the director of Artemis Saitakis Technology Park and the Director of CIS Chamber of Commerce and Heraklion Michael Katharakis.

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