City of Stockholm Joins TALQ Consortium

Published on 2020-03-02

The TALQ Partner Programme fosters interoperability of smart city applications

The TALQ Consortium is seeing an increasing interest in its Partner Programme currently. Various cities worldwide have not only included TALQ-Compliance as a requirement in their public tenders, but are also demanding closer collaboration in order to be able to better understand and influence the TALQ Specification in line with their individual requirements.

Street lighting and other smart city applications, including their control systems, are long-term investments and planned to be in use for decades. Cities and other bodies such as utilities need to take account of various aspects of a tendering process: maximizing energy savings; reducing emissions; protecting the environment; increasing security; and reducing operational costs while increasing efficiency.
Besides trying to foster competition and negotiate the best pricing, purchasers of fixed installations prefer to invest in open, interoperable systems to guarantee future-proof solutions. These are the main reasons why more and more tenders include TALQ-compliance as a key basic criterion. This allows cities to select from a variety of different solutions for their individual Smart City concepts and still be open and prepared for further extensions. These smart systems might include outdoor lighting as well as waste, parking and traffic management, E-Mobility and other public services.

The Benefits of the Partner Programme
Since its foundation in 2012, the TALQ Consortium has worked to understand the needs and requirements of all stakeholders making investment decisions for new systems. To achieve this goal, TALQ created a Partner Programme, which addresses, specifically, Municipalities, Utilities, Consultants, Operators, Research Centers, Associations and all others that have an interest in the specification – providing advice and feedback – but will not place TALQ-certified products on the market. The programme facilitates the adoption of the Smart City Protocol and optimizes the operation of smart outdoor device networks. Participating in the Partner Programme allows the partners to evaluate the TALQ Specification in detail, submit individual requirements and participate in dedicated Workgroups and Partner Meetings.

Reasons for Stockholm (Sweden) to join
“The City of Stockholm has been looking into a new control system for some years, but due to the lack of appropriate standards the work has been slow. Now we can see the market maturing and standards grow stronger, one of which is TALQ. Therefore, we chose to have TALQ support as one of our requirements in procuring a central management software for a lighting pilot, and also join the consortium to get access to all relevant documentation and information, as well as following the development more closely.” reports Björn Lindelöf, Lighting Engineer, City of Stockholm Transport Department.
“As a city with a large installation we see that it’s crucial for the long-term maintenance to build a system that is modular and flexible. For us that means no vendor lock-ins and that the building blocks are independent from each other. As a minimum, the CMS and the lighting network should be independent from each other. Being a partner in TALQ, we hope to learn more about building these systems and also influence the development.” Björn Lindelöf adds.

The Partner Programme is open to parties with an interest in global smart outdoor device management standardization and free of charge since beginning of 2020.

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