Panasonic and Accenture join forces to create a smart city in Fujisawa, Japan

Panasonic, Accenture and seven other companies are to develop a smart city, Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town intended to be a model for an environmentally-minded urban area.
Panasonic, Accenture and seven other companies are to develop a smart city, Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town intended to be a model for an environmentally-minded urban area. Fujisawa is located roughly 60 km from Tokyo and has 400 000 residents.
Fujisawa SST will gain its intelligence via infrastructure and services — from IT to energy — from the 9 companies. It will support 1000 households and is to open in March 2014.
The focus will be on energy efficiency using measures such as solar power generation and battery storage systems, and the aim is to replicate success elsewhere in Japan and overseas. The reason for the USD 742-million project is Asia’s booming population growth. Panasonic considers that the development of new cities will occur swiftly on a huge scale, and believes that the rolling out of a full-scale smart city is a good business move.
The companies are measuring success by a targeted 70% reduction in CO2 emissions (compared with 1990 levels), and citizens’ acceptance.