COVID-19: What impact on our municipalities ?


In Research

The Smart City Institute (HEC-Liège / ULiège) has just published the results of a vast survey of Walloon municipalities that have had to adapt and find solutions to the difficulties caused by the health crisis. Through this exploratory study, the SCI proposes to provide the ecosystem with an initial inventory of fixtures allowing a better understanding of the dynamics underway in the south of the country. This study has been published in French.

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acing an unprecedented health, economic and social crisis, our cities and municipalities have shown resilience and innovation in record time in recent months to support their citizens and guarantee them a quality living environment. In order to better understand the stakes of this crisis and to draw up a first inventory of these initiatives developed by the Walloon municipalities in the face of Covid-19, the team of the Smart City Institute of ULiège gave them the floor through a short survey. 

The objectives of this survey were :

  1. to better identify the potential challenges and opportunities facing our municipalities,
  2. to highlight the types of solutions that may have been/are being developed but also the factors and obstacles that influence their implementation,
  3. to explore the sustainability and novelty of these initiatives,
  4. to study the impact of the crisis on the sustainable and intelligent projects of our municipalities.

Teleworking, communication with citizens, dissemination of information to the population, support for trade, new situations that municipalities have had to face, without having all the technical and logistical means to implement them. Although the survey does not yet make it possible to determine the full long-term effects of this situation, it does show that during this complex period, the municipalities of Wallonia saw the crisis as an opportunity to generate positive change, particularly through the digital transition.

This study made it possible to affirm that the context induced by the health crisis had created, in certain aspects, a favourable ground for the development of intelligent territories in Wallonia. New digital solutions that were not previously envisaged are now an integral part of the new way of working in local public administrations.

Smart City Institute (SCI)

The Smart City Institute is an academic institute dedicated to the theme of sustainable and intelligent cities ("Smart Cities" in English) based on an original partnership between a University (ULiège) and its School of Management (HEC Liège), private companies and Wallonia within the framework of the Marshall Plan 4.0 and Digital Wallonia.

SCI WEBSITE

Contacts

Smart City Institute | HEC-Liège | University of Liège

Pauline Naisse

Jessica Clément

Giovanni Esposito

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