ASEAN Smart Cities Initiative

More than half of the ASEAN Member States’ population reside in urban areas and an additional 70 million are forecast to live in ASEAN cities by 2025. While rapid and unplanned urbanization can undermine quality of life, exacerbate inequality, and cause environment stress, it also gives ASEAN’s cities and utilities an opportunity to mitigate the associated risks by capitalizing on the exponential growth of technology.

In total, 26 cities across eight ASEAN countries are participating in the AASCTF program. The main goal of the Fund is to improve the three key functional areas within participating cities in the ASEAN region – Planning, Service Delivery and Financial Management. Across all the Fund’s work lies three important cross-cutting themes that are addressed and embedded within every activity – Gender, Climate Change and Private Sector.

A central activity of the Ramboll Core Team is the identification of entry points and development of Task Orders for city intervention pilot projects (i.e., demonstrations and proof of concepts) focused on innovative smart and digital solutions within select participating cities; the ultimate aim of the pilot projects being to identify scalable and replicable best and next practice smart solutions to be applied within the ASEAN context.

As a Project Director, Jens Thøgersen was responsible for overall and financial management of projects, negotiating contract and subsequent variations/addendums, liaison with client and stakeholders, ensuring that all deliverables are submitted to the Client according to schedule.

As Task Team Leader, Nils Gardek was responsible for leading a pre-feasibility study for an employment service platform with matching tools and e-learning modules for Kaysone Phomvihane in Lao PDR. Nils led the preparation of project proposal and procurement of the project for Ramboll.

As GIS Expert, Manir Ryne was responsible for GIS based analysis for the planning of flood mitigation and the delivery of the services of flood early warning and responses, using smart technologies for the Baguio city in Philippines.

Both Nils Gardek and Manir Ryne led the preparation of project proposal and procurement of the project for Ramboll methodology and recruitment of the experts. Nils Gardek and Manir Ryne were also involved in task order preparation.