The Barcelona City Council and Schneider Electric sign an agreement to create the first SmartCity Excellence Center in the Barcelona’s District 22@
- The initiative will turn the “Barcelona” model into a smart city point of reference worldwide
- Schneider Electric, through its subsidiary Telvent, will design a Smart Mobility Plan for Barcelona that will enable a 20% reduction in the travel time
Schneider Electric, the global leader in energy management, signed an agreement with the Barcelona City Council to create in the Catalonian capital the first Smart City Excellence Center promoted by the company in the world. The center will be located at the Smart City Campus that will be set up in Barcelona’s District 22@, headquarters of the future cluster of “smart city” concept-related businesses.Among the priorities of the Excellence Center is to promote smart mobility solutions in the city linked to the development of the electric mobility infrastructures, initiatives stimulated by the City Council. The agreement signed between the City Council and Schneider Electric envisages drawing up a SmartMobility Plan for Barcelona and, potentially, the city’s metropolitan area, to ensure the introduction of the best technologies and solutions applied to the realm of mobility. As part of this plan, the companies will determine needs and available resources, define strategic mobility objectives, and implement pilot projects that best adapt to Barcelona’s mobility needs.Specifically, comprehensive management will drive forward development and testing of an integrated management platform which will ultimately enable a real-time traffic management in Barcelona and will provide information via web or mobile devices, including traffic accidents, travel times, public transportation schedules, parking space availability, and route optimization. Schneider Electric through Telvent has successfully implemented smart mobility solutions in cities, among others Mumbai, Dallas, Rio de Janeiro and Beijing.The solutions to be potentially implemented in Barcelona will enable up to a 20% reduction in the time expended on daily travels, a 5% increase on the transit average speed in urban areas, thus representing a reduction in the travel time, and a reduction in the number of vehicles circulating in the city looking for a parking from 10 to 15%. The smart mobility solutions have also proven to reduce the atmospheric emissions up to 17% improving the air quality in the cities.In a second phase, the Excellence Center will capitalize the development of other key areas of a smart city: smart water management, smart grids, smart buildings and homes, e-government. All those developments will be integrated into a unique technology platform which will enable a smart management of the city.The agreement will help the Barcelona City Council to move forward in some of the strategic objectives set for the city, among others to promote a sustainable city model as a key driver of energy efficiency and high-quality public services. Moreover, the City Council and the companies have undertaken a commitment to collaborate to foster the initiative “City Protocol” as a global standard to measure the excellence levels of the city. “Apart from achieving maximum economic and operational efficiency in providing citizen services without sacrificing the quality and availability of these services, the City Council will drive forward an innovative sustainable city model”, stated Julio Rodríguez, Executive Vice President of Schneider Electric’s EMEAS (Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and South America) Division. “It gives us great pleasure to assist the Barcelona City Council in boosting energy efficiency through smart management, of mobility, first of all, and, secondly, of energy and other public services with potential in this city.”According to José Ignacio del Barrio, Deputy Chairman of Telvent and President of Telvent Transportation, “It is a joint objective to promote a sustainable city model based on the use of information and citizen mobility-related technologies. We are embarking on an exciting forward-looking project where Barcelona and its people will be in the spotlight thanks to the new model for urban development in which they will take a leading role.”The Excellence Center will function as a cluster of knowledge and development of technologies aimed at smart city management in order to consolidate and globally export Barcelona’s integrated management model focused on providing valuable citizen services. Among its priorities is to further a framework of collaboration with university centers, institutions and businesses to activate lines of application research to lead to participation from local and international experts and thereby enrich the global vision of the SmartCity concept. Along these lines, the City Council and Schneider Electric have undertaken a commitment to foster the incorporation of highly qualified university personnel into the Excellence Center, subsidizing assistance and international exchange programs that help train specialists and introduce them into the labor market.A network of alliances between the Catalonian capital and other major cities around the world will also be promoted to establish the dynamics of collaboration and exchange of high-level technological solutions. This has a twofold objective: on the one hand, determining the specific needs of each city in the Smart City domain, and, on the other, defining solutions to maximize economic and operational efficiency in providing public services and promote a sustainable city model through smart management of infrastructures and resources.Schneider Electric unveiled its solutions for addressing the tremendous challenges that cities around the world will have to face in the coming years at Smart City World Expo, held in the city of Barcelona at the beginning of December. Schneider Electric and Telvent have developed a set of SmartCity solutions focused on maximizing infrastructure efficiency and urban sustainability, improving the quality of the services cities provide to their citizens.