Smart Region, a regional initiative for Murcia’s Smart Cities

The Smart Region project is the roadmap for the region’s smart territories.

Smart Region project

This initiative of the Region of Murcia will make available to all municipalities in the region (45 in total) the possibility of evolving towards a Smart City with developments and solutions of the last generation. This project seeks to use the new technologies (ICTs) for public administrations & citizens to facilitate the understanding and management of the city, and to evolve towards the objectives of the European Green Pact, which seeks to transform Europe into a global reference against climate change.

The first step of this project is based on a platform at the regional level of Smart City in which 2 million euros will be dedicated between 2020 and 2021. This platform will act as the basis for the Smart Region and will be global, allowing this process to be carried out in all territories regardless of their size. In this way, the management team of the region pretends to create Smart City opportunities equally throughout the region.

Smart Region will create to create Disruptive Technology Demonstration Centers to show projects related to Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things and Big Data to place the Region at the forefront of the digital transformation.

Javier Celdrán, president of the Regional Ministry of Presidency and Finance, highlights the priority to collect information from our cities. This action will be included within this Smart Region project allowing municipalities to access other new funding such as the Innovation Fund, from the European Green Pact. These funds, aimed at combating climate change, require an initial environmental diagnosis of the territory and compliance with the KPIs proposed through the subsidised initiatives to receive 100% of the requested funds. Therefore, Smart Region also seeks to provide its municipalities with the necessary infrastructure to be able to know the state of the territory, to be able to define some concrete actions to be carried out, based on data and to be able to evaluate the impact of these actions through IoT infrastructures and thanks to the Big Data.

Smart Region: Monitorización de datos de calidad
Smart Region: Monitoring of high-quality data for European Initiatives such as Green Deal, Innovation Fund, ERDF and Next Generation

Smart Region Conference “The Future of Intelligent Territories”

As one of the first actions to raise awareness in the Region of Murcia and to disseminate the possibilities within this project, the Autonomous Community of the Region of Murcia, together with the Integra Foundation, has organised a conference called The Future of the Intelligent Territories. These sessions have been promoted by the Directorate of Economy and Finance and by the ERDF funds. During October, November and December, these sessions discussed topics related to mobility, tourism, intelligent beaches (Smart Beach), intelligent lighting, waste management, social welfare and different success stories of Smart solutions.

Sesiones Smart Region
Sesiones Smart Region: HOPU pitch for the 5 sessions about success stories

 

On December 1st, in the session focused on the success stories of Smart solutions, a more realistic view of solutions already on the market was shown. Francisco Abril, General Director of Local Administration of the Autonomous Community of the Region of Murcia, opened this online event by highlighting the role of companies in the Region of Murcia that is dedicated to this sector of the Smart Cities to place Murcia as a technological reference on the map. In the same way, the Director-General urges companies to evangelize citizens and administrations so that they know that not only smart cities are for big cities, but also small municipalities must start their way towards this evolution. 

Francisco Abril has highlighted initiatives such as “5K”, a project where eight municipalities under 5,000 inhabitants (Villanueva, Ricote, Ulea, Ojós, Albudeite, Campos del Río and Aledo) are going to become a testbed for smart solutions to promote other municipalities in the region to take this technological step.

During the case study session, different solutions of all kinds were presented by companies such as Neosistec, HOPU, IURBAN, A4RADAR, NEUROMOBILE MARKETING.

From HOPU, we have highlighted our role as a company focused on the monitoring and visualization of environmental data, to contribute to the sustainable urban design of the territories and our aim to develop solutions designed for easy management and understanding of the data by the different administrations. 

Antonio Jara, CEO of HOPU, highlights the territorial expansion of this SME, which is already working in more than 35 cities throughout Spain such as Cartagena, Madrid, Algeciras and at a European level, with more than 500 sensors deployed. HOPU’s mission is to help municipalities combat climate change. As a company involved in research, HOPU has a strong presence in European initiatives such as the Green Deal or Next Generation (NEXT CARM in the Region of Murcia).

Based on his experience in the Smart Cities market, the CEO of HOPU highlights the importance of metrics that allow municipalities to transform all data coming from sensors, databases and other sources into clear indicators of the environmental situation of the territory. An example of this use case is the indicator service that HOPU has already deployed in cities such as Cartagena, which makes it possible to identify where a city’s pollution comes from and to differentiate the percentage produced by traffic and by industry.

 

Finally, from HOPU, the catalogue of sensor services for air quality (gases and particles in suspension), noise, climate and other aspects related to tourism such as noise and flow of people has been exhibited. As a FIWARE company and from the role of Antonio Jara as a Member of the FIWARE Board of Directors, the use of this available technology has also been promoted, which is accessible and affordable for all municipality.

The event was closed by Joaquín Gómez Gómez, General Director of Strategy and Digital Transformation, who highlighted this last session based on innovative solutions in the region. He underlines that in this Smart Region project, they intend to promote first regional companies when implementing Smart City projects. In the early months of 2021, the platform of the project will be tendering, and they are working on other projects to make the Smart City more dynamic, some of which have already been started, such as La Manga 365 as another global solution for various municipalities (San Javier and Cartagena).  

As a novelty, the Director-General mentions a new line of financing that will come to light during the first four months of 2021, which will allow the different municipalities in the region to acquire technology and integrate it into the Smart Region platform.

 

Access to the pitch of Antonio Jara, CEO at HOPU on 5 session about success stories

 

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Blockchain y cambio climático

Blockchain against climate change

Blockchain also contributes to the European project for an emission-neutral continent by 2050 (EU Green Deal)

European objectives for 2025: The Green Deal

In 2019 the European Commission published the Green Deal, presented by Ursula Von Der Leyen as President. This plan lists 50 concrete actions to combat climate change, a highly relevant objective in the European strategy to achieve a neutral continent by 2050. This pact, known as the “EU Green Deal“, seeks a clean economy with zero emissions and the protection of our natural habitat, thereby contributing to an improvement in public well-being, a business awareness of the environment and making Europe a reference point for action against climate change. 

To achieve this goal, Europe proposes to work on clean energy, sustainable industry, efficient renovation and construction, sustainable mobility, biodiversity, pesticide reduction and an end to pollution. On 27 November 2020, was highlighted the Green Deal for the next five years, and the European Commission presented the six main objectives for this period:

  • Combating climate change to become the first neutral continent
  • An economy that works for people and works to implement social projects and is a boost to prosperity
  • A Europe for the digital age, empowering people and boosting technologies
  • Promoting a European way of life and building an EU of equal opportunities
  • A stronger Europe in the world that is a global leader
  • A boost to democracy, protecting and strengthening it

Blockchain, one of the new players in the fight against climate change

Faced with this situation and these objectives, which involve reducing CO2 emissions by 50% by 2030, the European Commission has estimated that it must invest an additional 230 billion of euros per year and promote public-private partnerships. 

To achieve this objective, Europe must promote innovation and research in the territories, in the business fabric and in industries, which will make it possible to reduce emissions, the risk of natural disasters and the impact of pollution on public health. One of the latest ITU/UN reports details how cutting-edge technologies such as climate monitoring, air quality and water resources, Artificial Intelligence and the Blockchain can contribute to this process of fighting climate change. 

In this report, called “Frontier Technologies to Protect the Environment and Tackle Climate Change“, the ITU sets up a working group focusing on environmental efficiency for Artificial Intelligence and other emerging technologies (FG-AI4EE) to study technology standardisation needs to contribute to these goals. This report recognises how Blockchain technology has been one of the great forgotten technologies to date in the fight against climate change and how it can play a crucial role in it through optimised use of resources and innovation, to contribute to this improvement process.

Blockchain is often associated with cryptosystems such as bitcoin, but this innovative technology has much more potential than bitcoin. Its origins date back to 1991 when Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta carried out the first process based on cryptographically protected blockchains. Its media popularity, however, began in 2008, when bitcoin was in the social spotlight, and today its use is mainly based on protecting and securely certifying data traffic, fighting against forgery and data protection. 

This technology focuses on the decentralisation of information from any process, such as banking management or data monitoring from IoT devices. The blockchain is a way of structuring the data, grouping them in blocks or sets adding meta-information related to other previous blocks in the process timeline. In each block it is stored:

  • Number of records in the block and related transactions
  • Information concerning this block
  • Link to the previous and next block
  • A fingerprint of the block

Through cryptographic techniques, these blocks are encrypted and form an encrypted chain of information, and it only can be altered by modifying all the blocks. 

The PwC in “Time for Trust: The trillion-dollar reasons to rethink blockchain” predicted that the blockchain has great potential to grow world GDP by 1.76 trillion dollars in 2030.

3 Blockchain projects to combat climate change

HOPU: This Spanish SME, dedicated to the monitoring and display of air quality data through IoT devices, is implementing the use of the blockchain for the certification of data quality and the protection of measurements in the different monitored environments. In particular, HOPU is implementing the blockchain for air quality monitoring in industry, where exists strict restrictions to protect workers’ health and the air quality of the areas surrounding these factories. The funds of this solution are through the Blockchers program, a project to promote the use of DLT (Distributed Ledger Technologies) in European SMEs. HOPU is already running its first pilot in the industry, in the Lisanplast plastics factory, which aims to ensure that the working environment is suitable for employees and to reduce the impact of this company on the ground, under the European Green Deal. HOPU is using the Besu Alastria B, which is regulated and compatible with the European network. Through this network, HOPU verifies compliance with regulations in the workspace, provides a calculation of total emissions and all this in an accessible and intuitive interface to access data in real-time and in historical data. 

PlanetWatch:  This French startup is developing a blockchain system to monitor air quality by taking advantage of the potential of communities. According to this SME, efforts to monitor air quality are not sufficient to date and encourage citizens to participate in this process. This project seeks to encourage people to purchase low-cost air quality sensors, install them in their homes, workplaces or even take them with them and record the data in a blockchain. Through this network, Planet Watch will make the open data available to scientists and governments so that they can combat climate change and will reward users for helping in this process. When a user acquires one of its low-cost devices and activates it to monitor data, it acquires Planet Tokens, utility tokens issued in the Algorand blockchain.  These tokens can be exchanged for Earth Credits, which are translated into euros and allow the purchase of new products and services on Planet Watch.

Smart Playground. Safe Environment for Togliatti: This Russian city of more than 700,000 inhabitants has great industrial relevance and therefore requires a relevant environmental control. Togliatti has set up an environmental monitoring network, installed in playgrounds and children’s games as the new generations are a crucial sector to protect in this process. This project has been carried out by the company Airalab using Libelium sensors. In this project, the chain of blocks has been used with the aim of a safe, verified and unalterable storage of the data collected, seeking to ensure that the authorities and citizens receive objective and transparent information, which shows the environmental state of the territory. On the other hand, this project uses the blockchain for its marketplace, which allows anyone to acquire data without intermediation. All you have to do is send a request for information through the available Smart City platform, and an intelligent contract is automatically generated for the specific sensor to carry out the requested measurement and provide the data with its corresponding quality certificate.

 

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i3market kickoff meeting

i3-MARKET: a secure and reliable marketplace to boost the data economy industry

Security and reliability in the data economy industry

Despite several attempts at research and innovation in the field of Big Data management and the integration and security of personal and industrial data, there is no widely accepted reliable and secure data marketplaces.

In this area there is, therefore, growing demand for a single data market economy in Europe, to be addressed through innovation in marketplace platforms, with the aim of demonstrating with industrial implementations that the growth of the data economy is possible.

 

backplaneI3MARKET

i3-Market marketplace design

Design of the i3-MARKET backplane

In this context, the i3-MARKET project arises as a solution capable of providing secure and reliable technologies, data-based collaborations and a federation of existing and future marketplaces, paying special attention to industrial data and, in particular, to the sensitive commercial data assets of both SMEs and large industrial corporations. The project, framed within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 innovation and research programme, focuses on achieving the desired levels of privacy and confidentiality in marketplace platforms, supporting both legal and control and transparency aspects for data sharing between systems and services. This will be made possible through the creation of a decentralised, interoperable and trusted data backplane, which will allow the integration of multiple marketplaces for secure and privacy-preserving data exchange across data spaces. i3-MARKET, therefore, puts a special focus on the regulatory aspects around sensitive data assets by developing the necessary security and access control measures that enable secure data trading, including support for automated procurement (smart contracts including the legal framework required under European regulation) and real-time data exchange.

i3-Market-Logo

A federation of data marketplaces as the main objective

i3-MARKET will enable the development of the necessary elements to create a secure and reliable environment for both data providers and consumers, and thus encourage and enable the creation of a more reliable European data market economy

The aim of i3-MARKET is to enable a federation of data marketplaces and common objectives as key elements in adopting the European Commission’s latest Digital Single Market strategy, encouraging the market economy of industrial data.

To this end, i3-MARKET is being developed on technologies and solutions that consolidate a trustworthy, secure, self-governing, consensus-based and auditable, interoperable (semantic-driven) and decentralised (allowing scalability) infrastructure, called the i3-MARKET Software Framework or “i3-MARKET Backplane”, which enables the federation of existing and future data spaces and markets through interoperability. i3-MARKET’s data backplane includes the ability to monetise data in the form of Intelligent Data Economy services, to deliver and share data and to reduce market entry barriers for providers to trade their data assets in order to ignite a thriving data economy that fosters innovation and business in Europe.

Contributions to strengthen competitiveness and confidence in data markets

In the global digital society, the loss of trust and reliability in data can be a major impediment to business. Data marketplaces, where success is largely due to consumers’ confidence that they will get what they are paying for. This is a reputation model based on trust, which requires a lot of time but allows large current suppliers to be placed at a clear competitive advantage.

At i3-MARKET, the use of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), as a blockchain, will allow all payments and contracts made in the data marketplace to be reliably and immutably audited and verified. This, together with the execution of intelligent contracts, will allow consumers and suppliers to have confidence in the i3-MARKET.

HOPU participates as an expert in IoT systems

As part of the consortium, HOPU is focused on the integration and use of intelligent data services in a marketplace driven by adding value in data-driven services. For this reason, i3-MARKET will enable the demonstration of innovative use cases based on the federation of data assets from multiple sources ranging from manufacturing, automotive and human-centric computing to connected devices, etc.

The inclusion of a high level of confidence and security in intelligent data services and the demonstration of the value of data-based services will allow entry into a more scalable market, beyond the current IoT market, with contextual data integration. HOPU will exploit the results of the project to understand how to deliver solutions based on the data captured from the environment to determine a correlation with the actions taken in the environment.

An international multidisciplinary consortium

The i3-MARKET consortium is comprised of experts in the various areas necessary for the successful development of a data market ecosystem:

  • Industry leaders 4. 0
  • Experts in connected mobility and IoT solutions
  • The Presidency of the Big Data Value Association (BDVA) (SIEMENS AG)
  • Software and security experts (SIEMENS SRL)
  • Experts in software and systems integration and leaders in IoT solutions
  • Suppliers of hardware and software security technologies and solutions (IDEMIA-OBERTHUR)
  • Financial security experts (GFT)
  • Experts in management and security of information systems (IBM)
  • European DigitalSME Alliance representing the SME community with regard to the European data economy market
  • SMEs experts in the development of tools and services based on blockchain technologies for the industrial and financial data markets (Guardtime and Telesto)
  • Experts in IoT systems integration (HOPU)
  • Experts in systems analysis and IoT market studies (UNPARALLEL)

Collaboration with leading research institutes is also being key to key scientific input on semantic interoperability, counting on

  • BDVA Vice-Presidency (NUIG)
  • Experts in security and privacy based on blockchain technology (UPC)
  • Experts in business and economics (AUEB)

 

i3market partners
i3market partners
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