Beatriz Sanz Baños Who says your pet can not become an influencer? Currently, 40% of Spanish households own a pet, according to the Madrid Association of Pet Veterinarians. That’s about 20 million dogs, cats, birds or hamsters that brighten the lives...
Beatriz Sanz Baños Your city is more accessible with IoT According to the latest data from the National Statistics Institutethere are 3.84 million people with some type of disability in Spain. A figure to bear in mind since it makes...
Beatriz Sanz Baños New Business Opportunities with IoT IoT combines virtual and real worlds for smart devices to generate a wealth of information, such that objects can act without human intervention. One way or another, the development of...
Beatriz Sanz Baños Smart gas stations and how to find them In the last few years, gas stations started to offer travelers a wide range of possibilities beyond mere refueling. This increases competition between service stations, which is forcing these...
How to know how smart a Smart City isBeatriz Sanz Baños 7 September, 2016 Forbes illustrates the clear cut contrast bigger cities face. On one hand, cities are responsible for generating 80% of the world’s wealth but compared to other geographical spaces they need to overcome complex economic, demographic, social, and environmental challenges at all levels. 70% of the World’s population is expected to live in cities by 2050. Developing cities so they meet the quality of service that citizens demand in an efficient and sustainable way is key to ensure the future of cities (and the entire planet). Technology becomes a core component of urban spaces as towns expand to become cities and citizen demands become more sophisticated. Thus, every city has a natural tendency to become a Smart City to efficiently answer these demands. Smart Cities are one of the main economic motors of IoT but they are also one of the biggest technological challenges societies have to tackle. Not every Smart City shares the same level of development and not all of them deploy digital transformation processes with the same efficiency. There are different methods to gauge and rank Smart Cities but we are going to focus on two renowned institutions as a reference. The annual IESE ‘Cities in Motion’ Index takes into consideration 77 factors in 181 key cities around the world. These factors cover 10 dimensions: Economy, Human Capital, Technology, Environment, International Outreach, Social Cohesion, Mobility and Transportation, Governance, Urban Planning, and Public Management. Other findings, like Juniper Research’s report, are based on two overarching benefits of smart cities: efficiency and sustainability in five key areas for cities: Technologies, Buildings, Utilities, Transportation and Road Infrastructure, the Smart city itself. To maintain the five areas in balance three downsides must be taken into consideration: energy consumption, waste and congestion. These different ways of measurement are not, in fact, divergent but much on the contrary converge towards a set of common concepts that ever Smart City quality measurement system takes into consideration. The three dimensions that are central to these (and other) systems for determining the quality of a Smart City are The city elementsthe public and private actors involved in the Smart CityThe way citizens’ lives are improved There are two negative factors that ever Smart City has to strive to keep as low as possible to improve efficiency and sustainability: Energy consumptionWaste generation A way of checking proper development of Smart Cities is by referring to the Ten Best Practices for Smart Cities form Telefónica, PWC and the IE Business School’s joint whitepaper: Have a long term Smart City plan, involving every actorClearly determine resource priorities and scopeDesignate the Mayor as the leader of Smart City initiativesFavour any required transversal technological changesSeek collaboration from other City CouncilsFoster a legal framework that favours digitizationCreate a mixed model that involves private corporations and generates new business modelsDigitized vertical services must connect horizontally to exploit common synergiesOpt for open, standard and interoperable platforms that create innovative ecosystemsShare open data that creates value for citizens and developers working on new services As the name of the IESE Index – ‘Cities in Motion’ – clearly mentions, Smart Cities are changing urban spaces of digital transformation. The index also shows us how relevant different combined factors are in order to offer the best public services possible to citizens. This process must be seen as a cycle in search of constant improvement and an ongoing project as bustling as the city itself. To conclude we should mention that cities are not only developed through internal efforts but sometimes receive external stimuli. It is quite common for countries to establish digital strategies that benefit certain regions (or cities) over others. Transforming a small or medium city into a Smart City is a means to rebalance wealth. Not surprisingly, governments become involved in designing regional or even countrywide digitization projects. Bigger cities normally have enough autonomy, and industrial momentum through private companies to improve the efficiency and sustainability through technology. Our CEO, Pedro Pablo Pérez, will represent Telefonica in the European Cyber Security OrganizationSAVE THE DATE: Security Innovation Day 2016
Javier Coronado Blazquez Big Data in basic research: from elementary particles to black holes The Big Data paradigm has profoundly penetrated all the layers of our society, changing the way in which we interact with each other and technological projects are carried out....
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Santiago Morante Cendrero AI in Science Fiction Films: A Recurring Pattern of Fascination and Horror In today’s post we are going to explore how Hollywood films have dealt with the subject of technological advances, especially robotics and Artificial Intelligence. You will be surprised to...
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José Luis Núñez Díaz Alastria 3.0: the spanish blockchain consortium On the June 1st, the Annual Assembly of Alastria, the Spanish Blockchain consortium, was held. Today we are already more than 500 members: companies of all sizes, profiles and...