Smart Industrial City.
Industriestadt im Wandel.

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Three innovative settlement projects in the focus of the Industry Talk.

<p>Normally, the "Industry Talk" offers start-ups a stage to present innovative solutions to industry and SMEs. However, the most recent edition of the event series was dedicated to three projects planned in Dormagen, which inspired the company representatives from the chemical, digital, construction and industrial sectors to participate. All projects have in common that they are designed to offer companies a space for innovation and modern (data) infrastructures in order to be able to use the megatrends of digitalisation and sustainability for new business models. The inspiring pitches with almost 30 participants in the CHEMPARK neighbourhood office CHEMPUNKT were part of the current concept of the Dormagen City Marketing and Economic Development Corporation (SWD), which wants to develop areas between the industrial estate on the A57 and the sugar factory on the one hand and the city area and CHEMPARK on the other as Dormagen's innovation belt.</p> <p>After a welcoming speech by district director Dirk Brügge, André Heryschek, SWD Head of Structural Change and Smart City, gave an insight into the Edge Cloud Reallabor project: "Together with research and education partners from the region, we want to create a nucleus for edge computing. In addition to a competence team and an innovation room, a demonstrator consisting of a mini-data centre and a 5G test field will support companies from Dormagen and the Rhineland region in using the edge cloud diffusion for digital transformation and new business models. A funding application is currently being prepared. <br /> The second initiator is currently examining locations for the construction of an ecosystem-integrated edge data centre in Dormagen and emphasised that, in addition to offering storage space and computing power, data centres of the next generation must above all also function as an energy centre. For this reason, the company is particularly proud that it has been able to create an energy-optimised offering in this segment, which is now to be rolled out. Using an entry-level scenario in Dormagen, 250 MW of heat per month could be generated and put to use. SWD is primarily looking at commercial utilisation options in the summer months.</p> <p>Martin Bellof presented chemstars, an initiative of market-leading companies in the chemical industry to strengthen the start-up scene. The aim of chemstars is to pave the way for ideas, technologies and business models from research to the market. It is still "anything but easy to found a successful company in chemistry, biotechnology or material sciences", says Bellof. chemstars helps start-up teams with know-how and a network. The initiative is currently supported by Bayer, Covestro and CURRENTA, and other companies and the NRW Ministry for Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Protection and Energy are also involved.</p> <p>"The three projects presented are an excerpt from current settlement projects and initiatives in the Dormagen innovation belt. The great response shows that the transformation of the economy is in full swing and does not stop at Dormagen. We want to make joint use of the movement in the market and give important impetus to the business location", Heryschek and Martin Voigt, Head of Political and Citizen Dialogue at CURRENTA in Dormagen, summed up in unison. SWD and CURRENTA, as an associated partner of the Industry Hub, are jointly organizing the "Industry Talk" series.</p>

On Tuesday, 25 April, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., citizens of Dormagen can find out about the modern data infrastructures that the Stadtmarketing- und Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft (SWD) has been building for some time at three different locations in the city area.

<p>The first Smart Industrial City Rally will lead through the city centre. For example, there will be a notice board at the city library on Marktplatz, the former "Ratskeller" on Kölner Straße and the innovation location ChemLab, Unter den Hecken, which will have a so-called NFC tag.</p> <p>Participants have to scan this "tag" to get further information in the UnserDormagen app and to fill a digital stamp card. Once the stamp card is full, it can be redeemed at the ChemLab, Unter den Hecken 58. The successful "finishers" of the rally will be entered into a draw for seven local value vouchers worth a total of 300 euros. The voucher card can be redeemed at more than 30 suppliers in Dormagen. An overview is provided on the website www.nahwerte.de/dormagen. </p> <p>Besides the good feeling that there are more and more innovations and digital formats in Dormagen, the participants will get a look behind the scenes of the "Smart Industrial City". The rally is dedicated to this joint digitisation initiative of the city and industry. It is intended to make the associated measures tangible and their benefits understandable.</p> <p>"We are currently building modern data infrastructures with the Urban Data Platform, the Digital Twin and a far-reaching radio network to collect important data in the city via sensors. This includes, for example, visitor frequencies, climate data, filling levels of street inlets, car park occupancy and much more. Since these are very technical and complex topics, we want to bring them to the citizens in a playful way," reports André Heryschek, Head of Structural Change and Smart City at SWD.</p> <p>The UnserDormagen app can be found in the App Store or via the forwarding function of the website https://unserdormagen.de/.</p>

Currenta supports the "Smart Industrial City" initiative of the city of Dormagen with three terabytes of data.

<p>Dormagen, a sustainable residential and business location: Together with the Stadtmarketing- und Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft Dormagen (SWD), Currenta has been working on the vision of a "Smart Industrial City" for several years. For this purpose, SWD is developing its own digital twin of the city based on high-resolution aerial photographs and 3D models created from them. Currenta handed over three terabytes of such data to SWD and the city at the end of last year, thus donating the basis for building the digital Rhine city.</p> <p>The data was generated by Currenta's own project of the digital Chempark twin. In the summer of 2022, Currenta had commissioned a specialised service provider for aerial photography and 3D models to record new high-resolution data of Chempark Dormagen, capturing part of the Dormagen city area in high-resolution images: Dormagen-Mitte and -Nord, Horrem, Hackenbroich and, with a view to the 650th anniversary celebrations, the Zons customs fort. "It was important to us to create added value for our municipal neighbour. Once the plane is in the air and collecting data, it makes sense in the context of a good partnership to ask beforehand what data the SWD can support. After a brief internal review, the question was clarified and the areas of particular interest were defined," says Olaf Sakowski of Currenta, pleased with the successful support.</p> <p>André Heryschek, Head of Structural Change and Smart City at SWD, emphasises the importance of the data donation for the city's digitalisation strategy: "With the digital twin, we are developing an innovative communication and planning tool into which we have already integrated visitor frequency data for the city centre and fictitious 3D models for the sugar factory site and the Top West expansion area on a trial basis over the course of the last two years. This year, we are mainly working on developing a user interface for politicians and interested citizens, so that the results can be made available to the general public. The digital twin has a lot of potential for the further development of Dormagen into a smart industrial city. For example, it should make city planning and tourism location marketing more digital and attractive. Dormagen's mayor Erik Lierenfeld is aware of the importance of the data on his city's path towards becoming a smart industrial city and is pleased about the support and good cooperation: "The data material helps us enormously to further develop the city's 'digital twin'. I would therefore like to thank Currenta for the donation. Our goal is to bring this future technology into concrete use for citizens before the end of this year."</p> <p>Currenta itself uses the data for its own digital twin. Here, the experts at the chemical park use it primarily for site and infrastructure planning. But customers and employees also benefit from the digital twin via integration in the Chempark geodata portal GEOPARK. Due to the versatile usability of the data, it is also integrated into the Chempark Arena, which is available to interested visitors at the central visitor reception in the Chempark Leverkusen and to interested citizens at the Chempunkt neighbourhood office in Dormagen.</p>

The technical solution should help the municipality to act more proactively.

<p>Streets that become raging torrents during heavy rainfall because the sewage system cannot absorb the amount of water: Images like these are closely linked to the devastating storm in the summer of 2021, which devastated parts of NRW and claimed several lives. Since this experience at the latest, municipalities everywhere have been preparing themselves to better cope with such extreme weather situations.  "We can't influence the weather, but we can create a kind of advance warning system with technical solutions so that we can act with more foresight," explains Thomas Wedowski, operations manager at Technische Betriebe Dormagen (TBD).</p> <p>The technical solution consists of sensors. Currently, the first of a total of 30 sensors are being installed in street inlets - so-called sinks - throughout the city. In a pilot operation, the TBD will then test several application scenarios together with the Stadtmarketing- und Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft Dormagen (SWD) in the context of the Smart Industrial City, which will help to improve processes and make savings.</p> <p>"Routinely, the cleaning of the approximately 9,200 sinks in the urban area takes place several times a year, especially at the end of the year when the leaves fall from the trees. Over the study period of more than a year, we expect to gain insights into whether the current cleaning intervals can be optimised," explains Moritz Rechenberger, Head of Urban Drainage at TBD. Another effect is that overflow events during rainfall can be read from the measurement data. From this, in turn, measures can be derived in the best case that could increase the resilience of the infrastructure during heavy rainfall.</p> <p>The sensors record the level of the sinks at defined intervals. The data is transmitted via LoRaWAN gateways - radio networks - to the TBD's sewer information system and, in the further course, also to the Urban Data Platform (UDP), which is currently being prepared for this purpose. The aim is to identify correlations between environmental characteristics and filling velocities of the sinks.</p> <p>"Within the UDP, we then want to bring the measurement data together with other data sets. These include weather data or Rhine level gauges, for example. The combination of all data should help us to better manage heavy rainfall events locally. From the totality of data from sensors, weather data and heavy rain hazard maps, areas at risk of flooding can be better defined in the future. As a result, early sensitisation of the population and emergency services is possible," says André Heryschek, Head of Structural Change and Smart City at SWD, giving an insight into the practical benefits of the data model.</p> <p>Kanal-Netz GmbH from Meerbusch is accompanying the pilot project. Managing Director Elisabeth Schloten is looking forward to being able to use the data for possible AI models. The project is supported by CHEMPARK operator CURRENTA, which will also be contributing its own data from groundwater and Rhine level measuring stations as the project progresses. "We are sharing data with each other and, of course, also the insights gained from the pilot project, so that all sides will benefit," emphasises SWD Smart City Manager Christoph Reitenberger.</p>

Projects

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Development of an AI-based mobile mapping process for the low-threshold creation of urban digital twins

<p>The use of an urban <strong>digital twin</strong>, a comprehensive virtual image of a city, can significantly simplify municipal tasks such as infrastructure management. However, creating a digital twin through <strong>mobile mapping</strong> has so far required expensive equipment and specialized professionals.</p> <p>Together with the <strong>Westfälische Hochschule</strong>, we are developing a user-friendly and cost-effective mobile mapping process called <strong>EasyDigiTwin</strong> to create urban digital twins. This process is designed to enable cities and administrations to create their own digital twins and allow broad access to this technology and its benefits.</p> <p><strong>EasyDigiTwin </strong>will implement a prototype for a low-cost approach to mobile mapping using only cameras and GPS receivers. In order to then extract three-dimensional information from the image data, a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence method called <strong>Neural Radiance Fields - NeRF</strong> is used. This should further help to reduce costs while at the same time achieving a first-class quality.</p> <p>EasyDigiTwin is being funded by the <strong>BMDV </strong>with around €200,000 until August 2024 as part of the <strong>mFUND</strong> innovation initiative. The BMDV has been funding data-based research and development projects for the digital and networked mobility of the future with mFUND since 2016.</p>

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The LoRaWAN network usually consists of one or more gateways (antennas) that communicate with associated LoRa end devices.

<p>By setting up a city-wide Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN), SWD is taking the next step toward being able to offer digital services in Dormagen. The network usually consists of one or more gateways (antennas) that communicate with associated LoRa end devices. These can be both sensors and actuators. The gateways themselves are connected to the Internet and thus transport the collected data or sent commands. </p> <p>The advantage over other technologies, such as WLAN or 5G, is the low investment and operating costs, due to the high transmission distance of the individual antennas combined with very low energy requirements of the end devices. This means that the entire Dormagen urban area can be covered with just a few antennas. In addition, there are a large number of sensors that can be used for a wide variety of applications, both in an industrial context and in the smart city area. As a result, both citizens and local companies benefit from the infrastructure that has been set up.  </p> <p>After the technical infrastructure has been set up, a test phase will be run, during which various use cases will be tested and transferred to productive operation. For companies, SWD will offer a service in which the network can be used for operational use cases. This will save companies the investment costs for the network and they will only have to procure the corresponding sensor technology. This ensures that significantly more use cases can be implemented profitably.  </p> <p>Citizens can implement their own use cases via a free service and also benefit from the fact that municipal departments can map their tasks more efficiently and thus more cost-effectively and in a future-proof manner. </p>

The real lab provides the relevant methodological competence and develops blueprints.

<p>Global data volumes are rising steadily and at an ever-increasing rate. In addition, there will be more and more smart end devices (e.g. smartphones and sensors) in the future. Furthermore, the applications of the future will have a greater need for low latency, i.e., transmission with little delay.</p> <p><br /> These developments mean that, according to experts, the "edge cloud" will prevail as the future data infrastructure. This means that smaller data centers will emerge across the board, stationed closer to the end device of the data sender. As a result, the location of data centers will become highly relevant and municipalities will have to provide space for these requirements. In order to be able to generate local value creation, digital parks should be created around the data centers. These have the potential to positively shape structural change.</p> <p><br /> However, it is unclear how exactly such an ecosystem must be built so that it brings the greatest possible added value to municipalities and companies. The Edge Cloud Reallabor in Dormagen will provide the relevant methodological expertise and will develop a blueprint for the development of local edge ecosystems.</p>

The SIC HUB provides a spatial environment for cluster activities and is available for innovation-driving companies.

<p>Dormagen is becoming a Smart Industrial City and, as an industrial city in transition, is responding to the challenges of the digital age and structural change with intelligent measures. The aim is to build up modern digital location factors and to support companies in innovations and digital transformation as well as in the conception of digital and sustainable business models through consulting services and networking. In order to spatially locate the cluster activities, the Smart Industrial City HUB will be set up in the commercial district on the A 57 - Alte Heerstraße, which will be available specifically for innovation-driving companies, coworking and networking activities. The resulting synergy effects are an added value for companies in the quarter, which thus have direct access to the innovation ecosystem that has emerged over the last five years. The neighborhood itself will be included in the smart city strategy and will have solutions from the area of smart spaces, edge cloud and, in perspective, data monetization concepts for resident companies.</p>

The supply of renewable energies requires decentralized production and sufficient storage options.

<p>The supply of renewable energies requires decentralized production and sufficient storage options. In the best case, energy is either generated directly where it is consumed, or in any case in the direct vicinity. This results in low energy losses through transmission and thus high energy efficiency. In particular, photovoltaic systems on roofs could cover a large part of the power supply. Decentralized energy storage systems ensure a continuous supply and are able to absorb overproduction and compensate for shortages.</p> <p>In the "Smart Photovoltaics" project, the approach is to be taken one step further: through the factors of measurement, control, decentralized energy production and decentralized energy storage, as well as the digitalization of processes, all the necessary elements are to be implemented in order to test and implement smart grid principles. Furthermore, data on energy production and consumption will be integrated into the Urban Data Platform to enable a variety of use cases. In particular, a reporting system for e.g. climate balances will be developed (incl. energy dashboard) and the mapping of relevant key figures in the digital twin of the city of Dormagen will be enabled.</p>

Since December 2021

<p>In order to be able to collect and process IoT data securely and efficiently, a cloud platform was developed together with the Dormagen-based startup Global Digital Management Solutions (GDMS), which developers and companies can use from now on to manage their infrastructure and applications. Vendor independence and sovereignty over one's own data are particularly important. The platform is home to our cross-cutting technologies, the Digital Twin and the Urban Data Platform, and will be successively developed further.</p>

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Since October 2021

<p><strong>Visitor flows: </strong>To support the Downtown Master Plan and the Integrated Urban Development Concept (ISEK) Dormagen, visitor flows in the pedestrian zone of the downtown area are recorded with the aid of sensors and the data made available on the basis of LoRaWAN radio technology.</p> <p>This serves to optimize the planning and measurement of measures, especially of a structural nature, the real-time observation of what is happening in order, for example, to be able to check compliance with visitor and safety concepts, the marketing of advertising or retail space, and the demand-oriented planning of city festivals and markets. In the future, the analysis of the data will allow forecasts to be made of the expected number of visitors on a particular day and event. </p> <p><strong>Road traffic:</strong> A sensor-based cross-section measurement is also being carried out on flowing traffic in Dormagen's city center. The digital recording of traffic based on LoRaWAN radio technology will support planning processes of the city of Dormagen and enable the measurement of measures.</p>

Since December 2021

<p>The basis of our smart city activities is improved transparency and local cooperation to bring together, evaluate and optimize information that was previously maintained in isolation. Interactions between the most diverse producers and consumers must be balanced. Decentralized structures, smart grids, regional clusters and further networking of industry and services are building blocks of integrated urban development, especially in the areas of energy, environment and mobility. Local data platforms help to overcome silo thinking as well as to achieve automation effects and enable new services.</p> <p>In our system-of-systems approach, independent distributed systems form an open system network. The urban data platform orchestrates and harmonizes interfaces and workflows in this system based on open standards and future-proof architectures. We rely on open source modules and a horizontal platform solution for the integration of data from sensor or third-party systems. This allows historical and real-time data to be optimally utilized using uniform data standards and models.</p>

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Currenta ist Partner der Smart Industrial City

Smart Industrial City is a joint project of Stadtmarketing- und Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft Dormagen and Currenta, operator of the Chemparks Leverkusen, Dormagen and Krefeld.

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