Will Sofia become a smart city?

Sofia is gradually moving towards becoming a smart city. The capital has pilot projects for energy independent municipal kindergartens and schools. This became clear during the conference "Digital Sofia The Smart city".

According to the Mayor, reducing dependence on fossil fuels and carbon emissions is the first task when it comes to new technologies in city management.

The idea of digitising cities is to make traditional services faster and easier, thus saving time for the members of the public. Sofia is ranked 107th in the Institute of Management Development's global smart cities index.

"We can renovate up to 400 buildings of municipal schools and kindergartens in terms of energy and, where possible, we can also apply renewable energy sources, thus significantly reducing energy use," said Sofia Mayor Yordanka Fandakova.

"From the point of view of communications connectivity, which is the main element and necessity of the existence of the smart city, the commission is working very actively with the telecoms that are building the 5th generation of mobile networks," said Ivan Dimitrov, chairman of the Commission for Regulation of Communications.