What are Smart Cities and where are we at?
The Smart Cities They have ceased to be a futuristic vision, to become a very real present and integrated into our lives, without us hardly realizing it. We can see the impact of the Smart Cities in waste or water management, electric vehicles that promote sustainable mobility, smart buildings, home automation in homes, etc.
We are increasingly aware of the urgent needs of the Planet and also of the need to optimize resources, to make our lives as practical as possible, so that increasingly optimized resources are generated and adapted to the needs of being. human and, also, thinking about environmental needs.
The high levels of pollution in cities, energy consumption or eternal bureaucratic procedures are the main objectives to overcome in the coming years, to achieve more solvent measures, to promote construction of Smart Cities.
Cities with big bets
If we talk about smart cities we have to highlight Santander, because it has provided the city with more than 20,000 sensors, which are used to measure the state of the environment, parking, lighting, irrigation... An endless number of tools that have made it possible to save up to 30% of energy in public buildings.
On the other hand, Malaga is focused on smart mobility, with a fleet of electric vehicles and sensors that facilitate parking. They have also managed to reduce electricity consumption in a 30%, through intelligent public lighting, saving money and energy.
Madrid and Barcelona, for their part, also continue on the path of becoming authentic Smart Cities. The city of Barcelona is a pioneer in applied connectivity solutions, such as public lighting, waste disposal, the bicing system or the FAB laboratories.
In Madrid, the Intelligent Integrated Space has been created, which is the first in all of Spain, to improve social integration through the business, industrial and service spheres.
All of these examples are just four cities that are part of the 79 City Councils that have joined the Spanish Network of Smart Cities, which was born in 2011 with the signing of the “Manifesto for Smart Cities, Innovation for progress”. The objective is to achieve an open network to generate economic, social and business progress through innovation and knowledge and with the use of ICT.
The objective of this Association is to provide a positive dynamic between cities, to have a joint network in order to promote automatic and reliable management of urban infrastructure and services, in addition to reducing public spending and improving the quality of services. .
