The beach in Eilat, Israel. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The municipalities of the Israeli city of Eilat and French city of Nice are teaming up for a two-year project to find solutions to common problems, including how to make their cities smarter.

Teams will look for solutions to challenges in fields including health, infrastructure, transportation and energy, community services and tourism. The program will see ten researchers from each city participate and is officially set to launch at the end of February. 

Through meetings and discussions based on municipal problems facing these two beachfront municipalities with large tourism industries, the teams are expected to present their ideas at a summit in Eilat in September. They will present their final projects one year later in Nice. 

The research project will be run by the Eilat Tech Center (ETC), part of Arieli Capital, a platform which invests in academic, innovation and capital projects. In collaboration with the Nice Innovation Hub, the efforts aim to influence cities around the world facing similar problems.

“The ETC will serve as the hub for the future development of technology-based solutions for the common problems identified by the two teams,” said Or Haviv, partner and head of Global Innovation Platforms at Arieli Capital, adding that many of the solutions will be applicable in many other cities around the world.

This is not the first time Arieli Capital invested in a collaborative technology project. In January, the platform announced a new accelerator for Italian start-up companies in Israel, an initiative prompted by the Italian Embassy in Tel Aviv.