Cities require precise and readily available data along with digital tools that aid in decision-making and future planning to successfully reach their targets for climate neutrality and environmental action. Facilitating this dialogue at the European Urban Resilience Forum (EURESFO) 2024 in Valencia, ICLEI Europe hosted a high-level meeting. Here, city representatives and Google’s Sustainability team shared ideas and experiences on how they can partner to solve the most pressing climate challenges that cities face. Such interactions enable cities to leverage advanced data-driven solutions while supporting organisations to tailor their tools to various contexts making planning more effective for local needs.

Tom George, Google’s Product Lead for EIE (Environmental Insights Explorer), showcased EIE's capabilities, paving the way for city representatives from Lisbon, Rome, Athens, Thessaloniki, Tampere, and Munich to share their experiences and challenges in promoting and implementing sustainable mobility and how solutions such as EIE can help. ICLEI Europe experts from the Green Digital Transformation and Sustainable Mobility teams facilitated the discussion.

The six cities that attended the workshop are part of the EU Mission for 100 climate-neutral and smart cities, which means they are committed to be climate-neutral by 2030. All of them have to follow ambitious plans to reach this objective via their Climate City Contracts, and every help in terms of data and digital tools is welcomed. With mobility being one of the main polluting sectors in the cities, having meaningful data on the field can be very helpful, as discussed during the session.

Data-driven solutions can enhance planning accuracy and effectiveness, helping cities achieve their sustainable transportation goals more quickly. It is important that these solutions need to be able to support the broad array of challenges that cities face in their efforts to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. For example, in regions with extreme weather conditions, citizens are less likely to bike but may opt for a well-planned public transport system.

These discussions underscored the role of expert organisations like ICLEI to create spaces for collaboration and knowledge sharing between cities and companies developing data-driven tools. While private companies provide valuable data and resources for sustainable mobility planning, municipalities contribute essential local knowledge and actions that ensure the success of these initiatives.