In the field of smart urban technology, Barcelona is moving from the testbed to real on-the-ground implementation. In this article we examine the immediate horizon and the challenges facing the city.
© Oriol Malet
When you attend the European convention of Cisco – the global leader in the manufacture of networking equipment – and Barcelona is highlighted in the first three talks as an example of good practice in urban intelligence, you realise that the city really is an international benchmark. Smart cities are one of the main areas where we can see the explosion of connectivity that is going to transform the current internet of people, with 2.2 billion surfers, into the internet of things, which will, they say, include between 30 and 50 billion connected objects by the end of the decade, and Barcelona is a showcase for these state-of-the-art technologies.
The LED streetlights installed around the Born, in the Ribera neighbourhood, automatically regulate the amount of light according to the presence of pedestrians in that section of the street, to save energy, but they also report their own faults to the central office, making maintenance more efficient. Some of these lamps also have temperature, humidity, sound and pollution detectors that transmit this data in real time, forming the beginnings of a dynamic environmental map of the city. On the stretch of Carrer Comerç that runs from the Born to the Estació de França train station, rubbish bins are equipped with gas and volumetric detectors that warn when they are full. Consequently, local residents are not disturbed as much at night because the dustbin lorry only has to pass by when necessary. A couple of cross streets away, on Pla de Palau, a magnetic sensor is embedded in the tarmac of various parking spaces in the blue zone that detects whether they are occupied by a car and informs traffic control. And on the pavement opposite, the shelter at the number 36, 39, 59 and 64 bus stop has an interactive panel for checking routes and public information. All these features communicate with the various signal routers spread around the area, which in turn are connected to the municipal fibre-optic network: 500 kilometres rolled out across the city that are the backbone of more than 500 Wi-Fi hot spots available to the public and their mobiles. And where fibre optic does not reach, data captured by sensors can be transported by mobile phone networks, thanks to increasingly accessible mobile communication modules. The sensor density is similar on the 22@ district streets.
Now the viability of these systems has been confirmed in these two areas – the Born and 22@ – the same technology is being applied in other parts of Barcelona: the new streetlights on Avda del Paral·lel follow the same model as those in the Born; the Passeig de Gràcia redevelopment project envisages the installation of environmental sensors; a significant number of parking spaces in the Les Corts neighbourhood are going to be equipped with sensors; and remodelling Plaça de les Glòries, one of the main urban development projects currently under way, will be monitored by noise, vibration and dust detectors.
Better quality of life and economic savings
The benefits of sensorisation and interconnecting cities should be reflected in our quality of life as well as the municipal finances, through increased revenue, lower costs, higher productivity and improved public wellbeing. It is estimated that a quarter of the value the internet of things will bring in the course of this decade will be attributable to the public sector. Almost two thirds of this will be seen in cities, in areas ranging from surveillance to public transport, as well as water management, waste management, parking and lighting.
Dynamic parking models are being developed to reflect demand and, given that in some cases 30% of traffic involves vehicles looking for a place to park, optimising this operation will save on petrol, reduce pollution and give people more time. The availability of information on the real use of services will make it possible to adjust the cost of the respective service contracts. Ideally it will even be possible to create virtuous circles: in a neighbourhood where the City Council invests in connected streetlights, aside from saving on electricity consumption and maintenance and the possibility of offering the public Wi-Fi access, better lighting reduces the crime rate and means more people in the shops and other establishments. This creates jobs and, as the area revives, the Council gets more money. Another example: Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) are working to fit their buses with Wi-Fi networks. Besides offering passengers an internet connection, this system is capable of detecting (anonymously) their mobile phones and finding out which parts of the route have more passengers, what stops they get on and off the bus at and which buses they change to. With this information, which normal tickets do not provide, it will be possible to optimise bus routes and their capacity.
In the times we are living in, the key to municipal investment in technology is for it to be self-financing. According to one of Cisco’s managers, the cost of parking sensors is recouped in a year, thanks to the saving on traffic wardens in the blue zone. There is also another factor that could favour the adoption of smart technologies or hold it back. With any project of this kind involving the public authorities, it is essential that, once the order is placed, there are some tangible results in under two years. Those are the two left to any politician once you knock off the first and last of their four-year term, which they spend, respectively, on getting into their new post and selling the work they have done in the build-up to the next election. Some will find this a cynical view, others simply realistic.
The promise of open platforms
However, not everything is as simple. The technical options available cannot always be applied to the limit. On paper, drivers could consult an app on their smartphone to see where there is a free parking space but municipal mobility staff think that would lead to races, to see who can get there first, and they prefer to show the percentage occupied by area. People conscious of the privacy of their personal details might be reluctant to see their activity quantified and processed even more. And local authority chiefs from all over the world who, a few months ago, took part in the Smart City Expo, expressed their concern at the lack of standards and the danger that implies of being held captive by a single technology provider.
Two open platforms, run partly from Barcelona in collaboration with London, Genoa and Bologna, are therefore seen as promising. For data capture there is Sentilo, a standard that regulates the interaction with sensors and actuators installed in public spaces. And for sharing data that is collected there is iCity, which facilitates their use by application developers and the public. These are two of the pieces that will have to form part of the smart city operating system in the not-too-distant future.
Naturally, Cisco is very interested in increasing the number of things that are connected, because its network switches and routers channel a large part of the data circulating around the world. The massive roll-out of the so-called internet of things will take place during this decade. A large part of the 30 billion independent items that will be connected and the 200 billion capable of being connected around the world in 2020 will be in the energy, transport and commercial sectors – there are casinos in Las Vegas where all the chips are digitally labelled – as well as manufacturing, which explains the participation of companies like Rockwell, Zebra and Schneider in the Smart City Expo.
We already have new things connected, such as smart watches and devices that monitor physical activity. And we are going to see more. By the start of next year, some manufacturers of household electrical appliances will be bringing out washing machines, dishwashers, loudspeakers and air-conditioners that will use the AllJoyn protocol of chip manufacturer Qualcomm to communicate with each other and say what functions they can offer. Of course, faced with this avalanche of data, somebody will need to establish order here and set clear limits in relation to privacy.