Barcelona is reaffirming its leadership as an innovative city at the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), which is focusing on urban and environmental management challenges to improve citizens’ quality of life. With the slogan ‘Barcelona, Living City’, and featuring more than a dozen initiatives across all areas of the City Council, the city’s stand will present the latest actions and forward-thinking policies that place innovation at the service of people and contribute to a city with a more responsible and sustainable outlook.

The new edition of the SCEWC will take place from 4 to 6 November at the Gran Via venue of Fira de Barcelona. With the slogan ‘The Time for Cities’, the congress encourages cities to act as drivers of change. The event will focus on strategies to transform today’s metropolises into more sustainable and liveable spaces, highlighting artificial intelligence as a key tool to accelerate the shift towards more efficient and sustainable cities. The event aims to harness the full potential of technology to transform the urban landscape. To achieve this, it will bring together over 1,100 exhibitors and 25,000 visitors, exceeding last year’s attendance.

Barcelona is a growing city that sees innovation, sustainability and new technologies as essential tools to address global challenges, while always placing people at the centre and advancing responsibly and sustainably.

These innovation policies are evident in the transformation of its streets, buildings, public spaces and services,+ with the aim of ensuring a better quality of life for citizens, and with sustainability as a collective commitment to creating a city that remains sustainable over time.

The congress will highlight initiatives within the city’s ongoing transformation, with a focus on building a more resilient, fair, transparent and responsible city where technology serves its residents.

Innovation to improve city life              

The City Council will present several innovative projects that focus on driving the city’s transformation while keeping citizens at the heart of every initiative. The most notable ones include initiatives that apply new technologies across the City Council’s departments and throughout the city. One example is Barcelona Fàcil, a new administrative simplification strategy designed to improve interactions with citizens and businesses, remove bureaucratic hurdles and ensure legal security. It promotes a more accessible, citizen-focused administration, which is particularly important in a city where over 50,000 such procedures are carried out each year.

Barcelona’s model for the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) also stands out for aiming to drive a responsible, sustainable digital transition in which AI is used to enhance the municipal technology ecosystem and public services, while empowering citizens to use it in an inclusive, simple, proactive, personalised and efficient way. The stand will also provide information on the new byelaw for experimental spaces, which makes it easier to test innovation projects that improve city management in real-world environments. It will feature the ‘Local Digital Twins and CitiVERSE’ initiative, promoted by the European Union and co-led by Barcelona, further cementing the city’s role as a benchmark in smart city development and innovation.

Barcelona City Council has also launched a transformation plan for social services through an integrated platform for social care that unifies data and processes and uses technology to build trust with citizens while streamlining procedures. As an example, the Barcelona Social app has been developed as a quick and user-friendly tool that brings social services closer to citizens and transforms how they interact with them. Congress visitors will also be able to try the Alzheimer Chatbot, an informative tool aimed at caregivers and families that answers questions about Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

Regarding urban transformation, the city’s stand presents a range of projects that are making its streets, public spaces and buildings more accessible and responsive to citizens. A key example is the new model for children’s play areas, designed with innovation and technology and tailored to children’s usage patterns and the city’s climate, while optimising maintenance and improving quality. Visitors will be able to see a simulation of a play area equipped with sensors to collect usage and thermal data.

Another urban transformation initiative is the result of a challenge launched by the Barcelona Energy Agency and BIT Habitat to create seasonal shaded areas that also generate renewable energy. This is an example of the City Council’s commitment to making Barcelona a leading city in climate neutrality and decarbonisation, with a focus on accelerating the generation of clean, renewable energy within the city. At the stand, visitors will be able to see models of the two winning pilot projects, Osma and Ombra Viva, which will soon be installed at Campus Nord.

One of the municipal government’s priorities –ensuring access to decent and affordable housing– will also be showcased at the SCEWC through an initiative from the IMHAB (Municipal Institute of Housing). Three scale models of public housing developments (Veneçuela 96, Ulldecona 2-10 and Pallars 489) will be displayed, illustrating how the city is promoting industrialised housing, which reduces construction times more sustainably. Visitors will also be able to take a virtual tour of these housing developments using virtual reality glasses.

The city’s stand will also feature one of Barcelona’s iconic landmarks, the Magic Fountain of Montjuïc, which was reopened during the recent La Mercè festivities after three years of inactivity due to drought-related restrictions. It was reopened after undergoing updates aimed at improving its management and making it more sustainable. A large video display will showcase both current and past images of the fountain. A further highlight will be a video presentation of the Pòdium project, a European research and innovation initiative in which Barcelona City Council is participating through the IMI (Municipal Institute of Information Technology) and the Manager’s Office for Mobility. The project seeks to improve interoperability between the Mobility Control Centre and the Fire Services, making emergency vehicle operations safer and more efficient.

Finally, the Tomorrow Mobility event will take place at the Smart City Expo World Congress, as it does every year, with a prominent role for the Barcelona Innova Lab Mobility (BILM), highlighting pilot projects already implemented and the challenges launched to date. BILM is an initiative led by Barcelona City Council through its Mobility Department and the BIT Habitat Foundation, in collaboration with Fira de Barcelona. It serves as a living laboratory for smart and sustainable urban mobility. Tomorrow Mobility will provide an update on the various challenges launched to date, including one focused on improving the city’s bus network to develop innovative solutions for efficiency and user experience, and another aimed at reducing noise pollution linked to mobility by identifying sources of acoustic signals to generate actionable data. The winners of the latest challenge, launched jointly with Mobile World Capital and focused on urban goods distribution in the hospitality and restaurant sector, will be announced during the event, while the conditions for upcoming challenges will also be outlined.

A space to share experiences and best practices

Barcelona City Council will provide a dedicated area within the stand for presentations of municipal projects and informal networking sessions. Several projects will be presented at the Àgora, such as the transformation of social services in Barcelona led by IMI and IMSS (Municipal Institute of Social Services), the community well-being intervention service for social housing managed by IMHAB and the presentation of the two winning projects from the challenge launched by the BIT Habitat Foundation and BIMSA (Barcelona Municipal Infrastructures) called ‘Mineral. Urban Mining Architectures’. two proposals that provide innovative solutions to give a second life to materials from public construction, thus contributing to the decarbonisation of cities.

Technical representatives from most municipal departments and institutes will be present throughout the congress in the networking workspace to respond to visitor requests and answer questions related to the projects on display and the City Council’s smart city policies and actions.

Technologies for sustainability and innovation

The Barcelona City Council stand will also feature a space for Barcelona Activa that presents devices and technological projects for the smart transformation of cities.

This showcase will be complemented by ten innovative companies, each with an exhibition area to present solutions focused on urban services. These companies include Taxitronic, a leader in technology for the taxi sector; Cactus, offering platforms to optimise processes and mobility; Inowise.IO, specialising in IoT for buildings and cities; Mica Eco, using AI to monitor water consumption; Taiga, providing smart filtered water dispensers; Yup Mobility, supplying parking and charging systems for personal mobility vehicles; Argos, creating smart containers and digitalised bus stops; Aplicaciones Eléctricas ENE SA, experts in telecommunications; Test JG, offering solutions for efficient infrastructure maintenance; and Protofy.xyz, which combines smart city consultancy with Vento, an open-source platform for creating physical-digital products using AI and natural language. All of these companies will present products that combine technology, sustainability and innovation to enhance city life.