SCEWC 2019: The Smart City of Barcelona & emerging needs
What makes a city smart? Did Barcelona succeed in achieving sustainability and how can society become more inclusive for aging people?
In the last three decades, Barcelona grew up into one of the smartest cities in the world (top 30) by following 22 smart local programs that affected different dimensions of the city: Telecommunications networks; Urban Platform; Smart Data; Smart Light; Energy self-sufficiency; Smart Water; Smart Mobility; Renaturation; Urban Transformation; Smart Furnishings; Urban Resilience; Citizenship; Open Government; Barcelona in the pocket; Smart Garbage Collection; Smart Regulation; Smart Innovation; Health and Social Services; Education; Smart Tourist Destination; Infrastructure and Logistics; Leisure and Culture.
Economic, environmental & social sustainability
The programs above produced a positive measurable influence on the local economy (GDP, employment). But is a sustainable economy the only indicator of a successful city? Environmental, and social sustainability are important as well and Barcelona is a positive example in these fields too. After introducing Superblocks in 2016, the city continues with its pro-environmental efforts. Starting from January 2020, Barcelona becomes a low emission zone by excluding 50,000 of the most polluting vehicles from the city streets. The owners of these vehicles were offered a 3 years of free access to the T-verde travel card if they hand over their vehicle to be dismantled at the scrapyard and don’t buy a new one during that period.
Social sustainability is a vast field and may have many different meanings, depending on a social position. However, smart cities are mutually comparable by “human capital” — developed or attracted talents. Barcelona’s total student population is around 188,000.
The smartest city
Here are some of the areas which may decide on what city is the smartest: Implementing innovative technology; Using energy and resources efficiently; Establishing affordable and efficient transportation systems; Enabling a high mobility of citizens; Implementing an inclusive and sustainable urbanization, social cohesion, governance, and urban planning; Improving the quality of life; Solving key urban challenges.
London is the smartest city in the world for 2019, in the competition of 174 cities from 80 countries, leaving behind (chronologically) New York, Amsterdam, Paris, Reykjavik, Tokyo, Singapore, Copenhagen, Berlin and Vienna in the first ten. Europe dominates the list with 28 cities among the first 50 top-ranked in the world. It stands out for social cohesion, transportation, and public management. North America, as the second-best ranked continent, stands out for economic and human capital.
When it comes to energy, all the listed cities can and should radically improve in the future and big data can help with optimizing energy consumption. According to the Eurostat data, the gross electricity generation from renewable sources (EU-28), doubled in ten years (2008–2017). Wind power is in a huge expansion. However, there is room for progress with other sources of renewable energy such as Geothermal (utilizes the Earth’s internal heat), Solar or Hydropower which is stagnating. There is no green energy. Building hydropower dams disrupt river ecosystems, but it brings the energy with the lowest carbon footprint. Solar energy is the most accessible renewable resource, but producing solar panels may involve toxic chemicals. However, the environmental damage connected with renewable energy sources is far from the negative environmental impact of burning fossil fuels.
SCEWC
During my recent visit to the Smart City Expo World Congress 2019 in Barcelona, I found interesting a product developed in cooperation with Milestone and Canon — a crowd people counter. The product aimed for Milestone XProject is applicable for event management, public safety and city planning. It discovers precise statistical trends by analyzing the number of people in specific areas or public spaces. A Product Specialist from Canon, Mr. Shun Takagi, emphasizes wide coverage area, fast and accurate crowd counting and less equipment needed as the biggest strengths of this product. During the initial tests, it demonstrated better performances than competitive people counting methods such as top-down sensors, background difference detection software, infrared beam, and counting based on a wi-fi connection. It may be an interesting solution for any of the numerous festivals in Barcelona such as Sónar, Primavera Sound or La Mercè when the city center is overloaded by tourists.
The potential of the Real Time Data in IoT
Using Real-Time IoT Data may bring quality new solutions in some of the following fields:
- Energy — Efficient energy distribution
- Garbage — Efficient trash collection and recycling
- Traffic lights — Using real-time data collected from sensors to adjust the timing
- Connected cars — Finding nearby parking and EV charging docks
- Accessibility — Customized inclusive solutions for people with certain visual, hearing, cognitive, motor function and spatial orientation limitations
Emerging needs: Smart aging
From a technical perspective, a smart city can be defined as an ICT framework for development, deployment, and promotion of sustainable urbanization practices. It is an intelligent network of connected objects and machines that transmit data using wireless technology to address growing urbanization challenges. Smart Cities rely on cellular and Low Power Wide Area (LPWAN) wireless technologies and IoT. The imperative of every Smart City is to develop efficient, compact and functional infrastructure, that will upgrade the quality of life for residents.
There are already a plenty of smart innovations out there, such as experimental segment of autonomous vehicles, smart microwaves, connected football that can measure speed and distance for professional players, fitness trackers and wearables, smart body composition scales for tracking fitness activities and their influence to body fat level or even body balance and bone mass.
Still, User Experience Design (UXD) has a lot to prove in the field of AI and IoT. Is creative thinking capable to use technology for helping humanity with real problems? There is a huge room for innovations in some emerging fields. As the World Health Organization (WHO) states, the majority of the world’s population can expect to ‘live in their sixties and beyond’. WHO adds that ‘the number of people aged 60 years or older will rise from 900 million to 2 billion between 2015 and 2050, moving from 12% to 22% of the total global population’. People will be able to contribute to their communities longer.
Is society ready to become more inclusive for aging people? Marginalization is the major problem and we need to accept our older. Full automatization of simple, unimportant, repetitive tasks can be a good start, so aging people can focus more on continuous learning, quality social interactions, and preventive health care. Some countries can benefit a lot from this field. Europe (Monaco, Germany, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Albania, Portugal, Greece, Spain, etc.), Japan and Canada are facing high mortality among native citizens and/or potential population collapse in the future. However, the developed economies such as Canada and Germany, count on migratory over natural increase. Southern Europe is not that lucky because of the negative net migration rate. Spain is the European champion in rapid negative net migration. Younger people are moving to the developed economies, leaving their countries, and older behind. How can technology help?
What are the emerging problems in your country which can be solved or reduced with the help of AI and IoT? Please, swipe down and leave your comment.
