HOPU proposal has been the winner of the challenge proposed by FIWARE Zone and promoted by Telefónica and La Junta de Andalucía.
On Thursday, October 1st at the 11th GreenCities Forum in Malaga, the winner of the FIWARE Zone IoT 2020 challenge for the diagnosis and prediction of the environmental impact of the Port of Algeciras Bay was made official. A jury formed by Telefonica, the Port Authority of the Bay of Algeciras (APBA) and FIWARE Zone has selected the proposal of the company HOPU from the 9 finalists to monitor and control the levels of air quality, noise and water quality in the Port of Algeciras.
FIWARE Zone is a non-profit public-private initiative of the Ministry of Economy, Knowledge, Business and University of the Andalusian Regional Government and Telefónica to support and promote intelligent solutions for the development of Smart Cities, Industry 4.0 and Smart Agrifood. They carry out different actions such as training, technological consultancy, talks, mentoring, access to European funds and support for the deployment of pilots.
Based on its lines of action, FIWARE Zone raised last September the need for the APBA for a solution to monitor and predict the environmental impact of the Port of Algeciras with an investment of up to 100,000 euros. To do this, it opened a call for proposals which ended last September 10th.
More than 130 IoT sensors for air quality, noise and water quality to monitor port activity in Algeciras.
HOPU is a company dedicated to Smart Cities and Smart Destinations with headquarters in the Region of Murcia, and branches in different areas of Spain such as Valencia, Malaga and Madrid. Its main product is a high-precision IoT device called Smart Spot that monitors air quality, detecting harmful and greenhouse gases suspended particles such as dust and pollen, volatile organic compounds (odours), and other parameters such as noise, people flow and weather. All these sensors in a single device provide cost savings in management, maintenance and installation. These devices allow real-time data to be measured at specific points in the port to provide a comprehensive view of air quality and the most affected areas.
For the project in the Port of Algeciras, HOPU will deploy over 130 sensors distributed in 25 locations to monitor air quality, noise and climate and water quality probe to measure aspects such as marine flora, water pollutants, salinity, dissolved solids, pH and turbidity, relevant to have a complete view of the environment in both air and water.
With experience in more than 30 cities, HOPU is making the leap to Smart Ports, a growing market of ports that take advantage of the potential of technology to update their management systems, looking for a more sustainable, efficient and resilient focus.
Artificial Intelligence and sustainability indicators for Smart Ports
Based on the challenge posed, HOPU will design a data visualization tool tailored to the needs of the Port of Algeciras. To do this, it will use data from its devices together with other data sources already available in the Port of Algeciras such as light pollution, satellite monitoring data (Copernicus), ocean-meteorological data from projects such as SAMPA and SAFEPORT and data from the Ministry’s Geoportal. Thanks to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) that HOPU has already developed for other use cases, this data visualizer will show indicators of the environmental status in real-time as well as predictions, allowing the APBA to make decisions based on relevant data, allowing more efficient and sustainable management of the port.
The proposed platform makes use of open technologies promoted by the European Commission such as those provided by FIWARE, a foundation that provides different open source software modules for the creation of technological solutions. One of the main components used is the FIWARE CEF Broker, the central brain of the platform that manages all the data and ensures the full compatibility of the HOPU platform with the entire European ecosystem. HOPU is an active member of the FIWARE Foundation as a Gold Member and is a member of the Foundation’s board of directors.
“The ambition of this project is to generate a model of the impact of the daily actions of the Port of Algeciras and surrounding areas, based on the different data, using innovative techniques of deep learning such as long and short term memory networks, identifying anomalies and events that have increased or reduced the impact of these factors on the environment”. Antonio J. Jara, CEO of HOPU
This visualizer based on quality data will make it possible to forecast the impact and support strategies to promote sustainability through the evidence for defining action plans. This work is contextualised within the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Health in All Policies (HiAP) discipline to promote well-being and its connection to climate change mitigation measures such as the European Union’s Green Deal.
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