Denmark: The City of Albertslund’s Danish Outdoor Lighting Lab (DOLL)

Whereas the initial aims of using the living lab as a testbed for LED solutions was energy efficiency, today the Living Lab has broadened its activities to include Smart City solutions across mobility and parking, Internet of Things (IoT) communication systems, environmental monitoring, waste management, indoor lighting, and driverless busses DOLL also plays a pivotal role in Albertslund’s Smart City strategy by testing solutions in three objectives of the municipality: increasing quality of welfare services, accelerating sustainable green transition, and supporting innovation and growth of the business community.
The living lab has proven to be a well-functioning format for collaboration between public and private partners as well as for involving citizens in decision-making. With regards to the former, the fairly simple setup of the living lab in which DOLL provides the basic infrastructure and a visitor centre and private actors rent parcels on a three year basis without any further requirements than staying within Danish regulations, has proven to be a format with several synergies enabling further and strengthened collaboration between the parties involved (see also section 3). It also implies that unlike other Smart City initiatives, DOLL has been able to maintain a rather stable income by financing the operation of the living lab from the companies renting parcels.
Regarding the latter, the municipality of Albertslund has experimented with using the living lab to visualise possible future solutions by appointing a team of ‘light ambassadors’ to represent the various housing areas that will be subject to the replacement of outdoor lighting. The initiative, thus, involved both educating the ‘lighting ambassadors’ in the state-of-the-art technology, as well involving them in the development of solutions and eventually the decision-making at the local level.