Date Published: July 25, 2017, 11:02 a.m.
n 2009, the City of Santander initiated the Project SmartSantander with the aim to transform Santander into a ‘Smart City’ by drawing on new technologies to improve public service provision and to enhance citizen participation. The Municipality installed 20,000 devices throughout the city in collaboration with the European Union, the University of Cantabria and the private sector. The devices, mainly sensors, collect urban data such as the level of air and soil humidity, noise levels, free parking lots, level of filling of garbage containers, water consumption, among others. In continuation, the data is sent to a common platform where it is analyzed and bundled before being transmitted to the corresponding municipal services. The information obtained in this way allows for a more efficient management of water, energy, resources, urban mobility, waste, etc., and facilitates the access to information of commercial and touristic utility.
The SmartSantander Project aims at converting Santander into the first ‘Smart City’ of Europe. According to the vision put forward by the City of Santander, the introduction of new technologies to municipal management is at the core of a new urban development model that will enhance the quality of life of the citizens. Concretely, the Project seeks to:
STRUCTURE: SENSORS AND DATA COLLECTION
The first step of implementation of the Project consisted of installing 20,000 devices throughout the city center within a perimeter of 1km. The devices include sensors, actuators, collectors, cameras and mobile terminals, divided in three categories: static sensors (installed in fix points such as street lamps or parking lots); dynamic sensors (installed on mobile elements such as vehicles, buses, taxis); participatory sensors (Smartphones of citizens making use of applications, and who allow the access to their data voluntarily). The devices are connected in a network and the virtual space where different categories of data can communicate is called the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT).
A common platform, called ‘Command and Control Center’ is currently under construction and should start operating in December 2015. The platform will gather the data collected by the 20,000 devices, as well as the data generated by the Open Data program of the municipality. The Command and Control Center will act as the ‘brain’ of the city, centralizing not only data collection but also analysis and processing. It will send processed data to corresponding municipal services; the objective being to gradually integrate all the municipal services in a common platform in order to improve their coordination, efficiency and sustainability. The information generated by the platform will be shared openly, permanently and for free.
TRANSFORMING DATA INTO PROJECTS FOR CITIZENS
Currently, the platform gathers more than 60 information packages used to develop projects and create mobile applications to improve municipal service efficiency. Some examples:
Furthermore, the SmartSantander Project seeks to use new technologies as a vehicle to create new channels of communication between the municipality and citizens, allowing for a broader participation of citizens in the management of their City. In order to do so, several programs and applications were created, such as:
In 2012, the municipality developed ‘Smart Santander RA’, an application that uses Augmented Reality allowing Smartphone users to focus on a specific area and receive information instantaneously on their screens. More than 2,600 NFC and QR tags were installed throughout Santander. Users may zoom on these tags to obtain information on tourist attractions, cultural agendas, opening hours, taxi spots, public transportation, commercial undertakings, the state of beaches, traffic, public installations, etc. In 2014, 15% of the inhabitants had downloaded this application.‘El Pulso de la Ciudad’ is another application, created in 2012, that provides a space for citizens to gather information on incidents happening in the city by sending photos, alerts and notices. The information is centralized at the municipality level and redistributed to the corresponding services. The application helps reducing the time of solution of incidents.
The project ‘Santander City Brain’ is an online platform that works as a social network where citizens create user profiles and may suggest improvements on existing services propose new projects or be consulted on specific issues. The municipality awards the best ideas, and implements selected projects with the support of the citizens who initiated the latter. Since its creation in 2013, more than 1,000 projects have been proposed following 6 project calls. Examples of projects that are being implemented based on citizen’s suggestion include Augmented Reality for people with special needs (handicaps, the elderly) that helps them moving around in the city; a mobile application that allows following waste collection in real time in order to avoid taking the same itinerary.The municipality also seeks to enhance e-administration and to improve its interaction with the citizens by offering online services that allow paying taxes, fines, request business permits, etc.
Another goal of the municipality is to promote local businesses through mobile applications that provide a space for entrepreneurs to disseminate their activities and services to potential clients, and tags that combine NFC and QR. In the same sense, the municipality is developing a new payment system (through mobile phones and NFC technology, contactless payment cards) in order to accelerate and simplify transactions between clients and local businesses (such as shops, hotels, taxis, buses, etc.), as well as public infrastructures provided by the Municipality (such as sport facilities and libraries).
“In my opinion, Smart City is not a synonym for ‘intelligent city’, but corresponds to the intelligent management of the city; a city that makes use of innovation in order to offer its citizens more and better services, as well as better access to information on them. And this is the vision of Santander: to develop a digital platform to which any public service can be integrated (including waste, water, and electricity management) so that technology helps us coordinate the services and take fast and efficient decisions, as well as save costs for the administration.” Iñigo de la Serna, Mayor of Santander (read more: http://www.i-ambiente.es/?q=entrevistas/inigo-de-la-serna-0)
Although the SmartSantander Project was initiated in collaboration with the European Union and was established for a period of three years only (2009-2012), the Municipality adopted the initiative as a broader city Project. Therefore, the Municipality of Santander is positioning itself at the national and international level as a reference in terms of innovation and the use of new technologies in city management. Correspondingly, the City of Santander developed a series of initiatives in order to consolidate its position, and to attract investments and talents, as well as to foster local entrepreneurship and research in this sector.
The Center for Demonstration and Entrepreneurship Santander Smart City was created in 2013 as a result of a Public-Private Partnership between Telefonica and the Municipality, and with the aim to attract new technology projects as well as companies able to invest in the development of ideas generated in the Center. The Center consists of three areas: the Center of Demonstrations, showcasing and explaining the Smart Santander technology to visitors; the Center of Entrepreneurship, a laboratory for launching ideas and supporting entrepreneurs; and the Innovation Forum, a ‘Think Tank’ meeting room to facilitate meetings and discussions between experts, inhabitants and entrepreneurs.
The Center for Research in Smart Cities of Santander (now: Santander City Lab), promoted by the railway Company, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Cantabria and the Santander Municipality was established in 2014 with the aim to develop innovative projects, from their conception to implementation. The Santander City Lab analyzes municipal services in a comprehensive way in order to optimize them and to improve their interaction.
In 2015, the Municipality signed a Local Pact for Innovation with institutions and social agencies with the aim to enhance Research, Innovation and Development in the city. The Pact seeks to facilitate access to funding for the development of business projects by creating a network of agreements with private and financial entities that facilitate the access to loans, financial instruments, and microcredits at favorable conditions. Beforehand, the Municipality had organized a call in 2012 and 2013 with a budget of 1.2 million Euros aimed at supporting technology enterprises, research institutions and entrepreneurs that make proposals relevant to the Smart Santander program.
“Facilitating innovation means contributing to a new model of production, diversifying economic activities, and generating jobs in an expanding sector. This is why, as an administration, we are firmly determined to continue pushing for new products and services, but also jobs and business opportunities for entrepreneurs, and, in more general terms, for the progress of the society.” Iñigo de la Serna, Mayor of Santander (Read more: http://www.i-ambiente.es/?q=entrevistas/inigo-de-la-serna-0#sthash.2ScXBiWQ.dpuf)
The success of the Project is mainly due to the collaboration between different actors and levels. In total, 25 companies and institutions from 10 countries have participated in the SmartSantander Project. The model of collaboration that has been established is remarkable, since it is constituted by a network of municipal agencies, citizens, companies, and the university, going beyond conventional Public-Private Partnerships. Correspondingly, the Project was developed by a team composed of 20 people with mainly technical profiles (a majority of which engineers) representing different institutions.
It is important to point out the role played by the European Union when it comes to financial support and expertise , which were provided in the framework of Horizon 2020, the main research and innovation program in Europe.
The University of Cantabria, and in particular the Group of Communication Engineering (DICOM), played an important role in the technical coordination of the Project, starting from the design of the technological devices to the creation of innovative services.
Furthermore, a close partnership was established between Telefonica and the University of Cantabria. Telefonica has provided the systems that allow for developing services based on the information provided by the sensors. Some of these components are part of the Fi-Ware Platform, an EU-wide intelligent infrastructure Platform led by Telefonica.
In the Municipality, the Mayor’s Office monitors the implementation of the Project and guarantees the cooperation between the different services. It is important to point out that the equipment (including the sensors), as well as the data that is collected by the devices are the property of the Municipality. The establishment of the Command and Control Center in late 2015 will facilitate the flow of information between different services that up until now have been working in silo and without any interaction.
Santander participates in a total of 11 technical innovation projects supported by the European Commission that represent a total value of 50 million euros. The investment for the installation of the technological devices was 8.6 million euros (subsidized by the EU). The maintenance cost of the project to the municipality is of approximately 2,5 million euros per year. According to the municipality, the project is self-sustaining given that private service providers and contractors will bear the costs for project expansion. In this sense, the municipality has developed Public-Private Partnerships through which private companies provide the capital for launching a project, while the municipality and the private entity share the future savings and revenues generated by the Project.
The Project has produced interesting results in terms of enhancing the quality of life of citizens, reducing the costs for the municipality, and fostering local economic development. Concretely, the Project has contributed to:
The media attention on the SmartSantander project, the participation of the City in national and international networks of local governments, and numerous invitations to present the experience in international forums stand not only for the international recognition of Santander as a Smart City, but also demonstrate the overall success of the project.
“The truth is that we are learning by doing. We are trying to improve while advancing and to develop a growth model that, beyond its most tangible results such as mobile applications, conceives the city in a different way and that is based on the need to coordinate the totality of urban services, to improve their efficiency and the capacity to react to problems in a comprehensive and integrated way. That is, when one of the urban services is affected, we should be able to transform and adapt other services in real time and in a coordinated effort in order to improve the functioning of the city.” Iñigo de la Serna, Mayor of Santander (Read more: http://smartcities.i-ambiente.es/?q=entrevistas/inigo-de-la-serna-0#sthash.9jJtStfX.dpuf)
The municipality identified the following aspects as the most problematic when developing a project the size of SmartSantander:
For other local governments that would be interested in developing similar initiatives, the Municipality of Santander identified a series of elements that guarantee the success of the Project: