Date Published: July 24, 2017, 11:29 a.m.
I
n 2014, the Valencia City Council has launched the Valencia Smart City Platform (VLCi Platform) through the InnDEA Foundation. The initiative enables the city to centralize information on municipal services thanks to the use of a technological solution developed in partnership with Telefonica I+D, and based on the European Fi-Ware standard. The VLCi Platform works towards SMART municipal service management and positions Valencia as the first Spanish city to have an integral Smart City management platform based on cloud services.The Platform compiles key indicators of city management and urban services; offers transparency to citizens; increases the efficiency of municipal services; measures their impact in the quality of life of citizens and allows for the comparison between cities using similar tools. The VLCi aims to improve and rationalize the governance model and encourage a greater participation of civil society, organizations and companies in municipal service provision. The Platform software is based on 350 indicators that monitor and integrate data on municipal services such as traffic; street lighting, gardens, local police, levels of pollution, waste collection and weather. Information is collected thanks to a variety of devices spread around the city such as sensors installed on buses or street-lamps and individual smartphones. The collected data is distributed to municipal services and made available to entrepreneurs who are invited to develop applications to improve public service management within a logic of open data policies. Eventually, the Platform will allow for the integrated management of public resources and contribute to an increased efficiency in various areas such as transport, energy and environmental services.
Valencia is the third most important city in Spain with an important economic activity thanks to its localization in the Mediterranean Corridor and a GDP of 97,333 Million Euro (Valencia Region, 2013). The city has a population of 800,000 inhabitants, a territory of 13,748 ha and a population density of 8.037 hab./km².
The Foundation of the Region of Valencia for the Strategic Promotion, Development and Urban Innovation (InnDEA Valencia Foundation) is an entity supported by the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Service of the City Council of Valencia with the mission to incentivize the development of Valencia through innovation. InnDEA acts upon: the entrepreneurial conditions and environment of the city promoting innovation in the productive sectors of the city; the local administration, incentivizing urban innovation and municipal service modernization with the aim to improve the efficiency and adaptability of the services the city provides to its inhabitants; the City in itself, turning Valencia into a more sustainable, livable city of international reference. Any actions pursued by the Foundation seek to support development and innovation targeted at a better quality of life for the citizens.
For more information, visit: http://inndeavalencia.com/
Through compiling, processing and analyzing city data, the VLCi Platform aims to enable a more efficient management of municipal services, to improve their quality and to eventually, positively influence the quality of life of the citizens and of the city environment. Additionally, thanks to engaging in an Open Data policy, the platform increases the level of information available to citizens, entrepreneurs, companies and developers, creating opportunities for internet developers and local businesses.
Therefore, the VLCi aims to strengthen the innovation ecosystem of the city: it will motivate the use of ICT in local businesses, promote entrepreneurship by facilitating the development of new local business and ideas, and enhance the intelligent management of employment services. Citizens will be encouraged to participate in the city management through an increased access to information and benefit from an optimized provision of basic and social services.As for the public sector, the platform reduces public spending, facilitates decision-making and eventually works towards a more sustainable urban model, both in terms of resource consumption and efficiency of municipal services.
The Valencia Smart City Platform will offer a wide range of services:the integration and management of the information of the various City Council services; the definition, presentation and management of key indicators (350 indicators constitute the basis of the software and will monitor and integrate data on municipal services such as traffic, street lighting, gardens, local police, pollution, cleaning, waste collection and weather); and the coordination with other administrative management tools.
The platform allows therefore for the acquisition, processing, storage and distribution of data relevant to a SMART City Management. The platform is designed to set out strategies that increase efficiency in service delivery to improve the quality of life for the inhabitants and visitors.
The platform is designed to obtain data from a wide variety of sources and devices distributed around the city, and to process the obtained data in order to generate useful information for the management, monitoring and governance of the city. The source, types and volumes of the data can be as diverse as the number of systems, services or technologies that provide the latter. However, the data is generated through two types of sources: field elements (devices, smart smartphones, etc.) and information systems or controls (other platforms and proprietary systems).Similarly, depending on the type of information processing, the VLCi Platform is designed to process data both in real time (which can come from the field elements or Control Centers and Urban Services) and lots (information from Urban Services not obtained in real time).
Presentation of information
Statistical and predictive analysis
Acquisition of information
Defining a global strategy and identifying specific indicators
Valencia City Council, through its ICT service and the InnDEA Valencia Foundation, launched in 2013 its ‘Smart City Strategy’. This Strategy is the continuation of the Director Plan of eGovernment (initiated in 2008) and aims to improve urban governance in the fields of innovation, efficiency and transparency, and to increase citizen awareness and participation. In the process, InnDEA collaborated closely with the R&D local ecosystem (technological centers, research departments, scientific parks, company associations, regional governmental bodies, etc.), under the ‘Local Covenant for Innovation’, active since 2002, to facilitate the dissemination of the initiative and lay the framework for future bottom-up strategies.
At the core of the Valencia Smart City Strategy, the VLCi Platform was conceived through an integrated and multidisciplinary approach, involving all areas of the local council. This involved conducting a technical analysis on the state of the municipal services; and defining smart strategic objectives, as well as an exhaustive compilation of indicators.
In this context, it was necessary to collect and analyze a large amount of information to define specific indicators or parameters able to measure the maturity and technological degree of the different areas of the city council. Initially, each municipal service defined indicators, and InnDEA was able to compile more than 1,200 indicators. Finally, 350 indicators were retained and classified into three different types: city indicators (Strategic indicators which provide socioeconomic information of the city) citizen indicators (measurement of the perception and citizen satisfaction with city services), and municipal services management indicators (to measure the administrative and operational status of each service activity).
Over 150 integrated indicators meet the “ISO37120 Sustainable Development of Communities: Indicators for City Services and Quality of Life” certificate, the first ISO standard on city metrics. This allows for a comparison between the performance of Valencia and other cities that follow the same standard.
Choosing the technology and a service provider, and installing the devices
In 2013, the Valencia City Council chose to implement the VLCi Platform using the European open standard Fi-Ware. Fi-Ware is a public-private collaboration initiated in 2011 between the European Commission (EC) and major European ICT companies with the aim to define a Platform as an open option for the development and global deployment of applications on the Future of Internet. In addition, together with the InnDEA Foundation, the City Council established an open innovation ecosystem around FI-Lab, FI-Ware’s online experimentation lab. Fi-Lab is a non-commercial sandbox environment where developers experiment with the data provided by Fi-ware enhancing the reuse of Open Data generated through the platform, increasing the collaboration between entrepreneurs and municipal ICT services. Both Fi-ware and Fi-lab are free prototyping environment.
The ICT Service of Valencia City Council opened a public tender for the development of an integrated City Platform in November 2013. Among seven companies who presented their proposal, Telefonica I+D obtained the best punctuation in the evaluation process, doing particularly well in Internet of Things components, and won the public tender in July of 2014. Telefonica I+D and the City Council established a four-year contract for the development of the platform with a budget amounting to a total of € 4.8 million.
The contract established the collaboration of Telefonica and the City Council to integrate the “VLCi Platform” into the internal city structure and systems. In addition, the contract defines the obligation of the private company to transfer the technological solutions to municipal staff according to a training plan approved by the Municipality. The training plan establishes that the following municipal services will count with the necessary knowledge to operate the platform: IT Services, Citizen Services, and the Administration. According to the contract, the Municipality may also suggest specific users that are to be trained.
To carry out the project Telefónica collaborated with the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) to deliver technology through 350 sensors that keep connected services under control, improving previous management systems. For example, some of the solutions in mobility include the use of 3,900 pre-existent traffic density sensors and 1,000 intelligent traffic lights that monitor traffic and relay information, such as traffic jams, accidents, and free parking spaces, in real time to drivers. The VLCi platform also produces interactive maps of pollution and pollen levels. Light controllers are being installed in 70 percent of the city’s streetlamps, as well as remote-controlled irrigation systems in most of Valencia’s public parks. Smart lighting and smart watering contribute to resource efficiency reducing consumption by up to 35%. Fire Fighting services have a new rapid alert service that decreases response time. Noise pollution, rubbish collection, water management, air quality and the other core indicators relevant to big cities are now centralized and streamlined. At the present, 90% of all municipal paperwork can now be done online. All city services that interact with citizens no longer require paper works and are done online.
Defining City Council Dashboards
In this phase, the dashboards of indicators and service levels were defined.
Encourage entrepreneurial innovation
The aim of this phase was to enable the development of new applications and solutions by local businesses that are strategically aligned with the Fi-Ware open standard, and to promote innovation in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the city to enhance the local economy and to create new business models. In order to do so, the Municipality provided training on the use of Open Data and Fi-Ware, and organized specific events targeting developers and entrepreneurs, such as hackathons. Valencia hosted the ‘HackForGood’ hackathon in April 2014 and the Multi-Site Fi-Ware event “Connecting cities to the Internet of the Future” in October 2014.
1. Defining a global strategy and identifying specific indicators.
Valencia City Council, through its ICT service and the InnDEA Valencia Foundation, launched in 2013 its ‘Smart City Strategy’. This Strategy is the continuation of the Director Plan of eGovernment (initiated in 2008) and aims to improve urban governance in the fields of innovation, efficiency and transparency, and to increase citizen awareness and participation. In the process, InnDEA collaborated closely with the R&D local ecosystem (technological centers, research departments, scientific parks, company associations, regional governmental bodies, etc.), under the ‘Local Covenant for Innovation’, active since 2002, to facilitate the dissemination of the initiative and lay the framework for future bottom-up strategies.
At the core of the Valencia Smart City Strategy, the VLCi Platform was conceived through an integrated and multidisciplinary approach, involving all areas of the local council. This involved conducting a technical analysis on the state of the municipal services; and defining smart strategic objectives, as well as an exhaustive compilation of indicators.
In this context, it was necessary to collect and analyze a large amount of information to define specific indicators or parameters able to measure the maturity and technological degree of the different areas of the city council. Initially, each municipal service defined indicators, and InnDEA was able to compile more than 1,200 indicators. Finally, 350 indicators were retained and classified into three different types: city indicators (Strategic indicators which provide socioeconomic information of the city) citizen indicators (measurement of the perception and citizen satisfaction with city services), and municipal services management indicators (to measure the administrative and operational status of each service activity).
Over 150 integrated indicators meet the “ISO37120 Sustainable Development of Communities: Indicators for City Services and Quality of Life” certificate, the first ISO standard on city metrics. This allows for a comparison between the performance of Valencia and other cities that follow the same standard.
2. Choosing the technology and a service provider, and installing the devices
In 2013, the Valencia City Council chose to implement the VLCi Platform using the European open standard Fi-Ware. Fi-Ware is a public-private collaboration initiated in 2011 between the European Commission (EC) and major European ICT companies with the aim to define a Platform as an open option for the development and global deployment of applications on the Future of Internet. In addition, together with the InnDEA Foundation, the City Council established an open innovation ecosystem around FI-Lab, FI-Ware’s online experimentation lab. Fi-Lab is a non-commercial sandbox environment where developers experiment with the data provided by Fi-ware enhancing the reuse of Open Data generated through the platform, increasing the collaboration between entrepreneurs and municipal ICT services. Both Fi-ware and Fi-lab are free prototyping environment.
The ICT Service of Valencia City Council opened a public tender for the development of an integrated City Platform in November 2013. Among seven companies who presented their proposal, Telefonica I+D obtained the best punctuation in the evaluation process, doing particularly well in Internet of Things components, and won the public tender in July of 2014. Telefonica I+D and the City Council established a four-year contract for the development of the platform with a budget amounting to a total of € 4.8 million.
The contract established the collaboration of Telefonica and the City Council to integrate the “VLCi Platform” into the internal city structure and systems. In addition, the contract defines the obligation of the private company to transfer the technological solutions to municipal staff according to a training plan approved by the Municipality. The training plan establishes that the following municipal services will count with the necessary knowledge to operate the platform: IT Services, Citizen Services, and the Administration. According to the contract, the Municipality may also suggest specific users that are to be trained.
To carry out the project Telefónica collaborated with the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) to deliver technology through 350 sensors that keep connected services under control, improving previous management systems. For example, some of the solutions in mobility include the use of 3,900 pre-existent traffic density sensors and 1,000 intelligent traffic lights that monitor traffic and relay information, such as traffic jams, accidents, and free parking spaces, in real time to drivers. The VLCi platform also produces interactive maps of pollution and pollen levels. Light controllers are being installed in 70 percent of the city’s streetlamps, as well as remote-controlled irrigation systems in most of Valencia’s public parks. Smart lighting and smart watering contribute to resource efficiency reducing consumption by up to 35%. Fire Fighting services have a new rapid alert service that decreases response time. Noise pollution, rubbish collection, water management, air quality and the other core indicators relevant to big cities are now centralized and streamlined. At the present, 90% of all municipal paperwork can now be done online. All city services that interact with citizens no longer require paper works and are done online.
3. Defining City Council Dashboards
In this phase, the dashboards of indicators and service levels were defined.
The aim of this phase was to enable the development of new applications and solutions by local businesses that are strategically aligned with the Fi-Ware open standard, and to promote innovation in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the city to enhance the local economy and to create new business models. In order to do so, the Municipality provided training on the use of Open Data and Fi-Ware, and organized specific events targeting developers and entrepreneurs, such as hackathons. Valencia hosted the ‘HackForGood’ hackathon in April 2014 and the Multi-Site Fi-Ware event “Connecting cities to the Internet of the Future” in October 2014.
The governance scheme of the VLCi project is the following: A VLCi office, composed by municipal servants from the ICT service and Telefónica technicians, is in charge of coordinating the VLCi project and the integration of the city indicators and the municipal services in the platform. A Project Manager, appointed by the Information Technologies and Communications Service of the Municipality (SERTIC), is responsible for controlling the management of the service, prioritizing working steps and validating the attribution of resources to the projects. A technical team assists the Project Manager in harmonizing, coordinating and managing the different tasks, and InnDEA Valencia Foundation is in charge of communicating the Smart City Strategy, the dissemination of activities, and for setting up an ‘innovation hub’ attracting entrepreneurs in the field of Smart Cities.
The private counterpart also appoints a Project Manager, responsible for directing the company’s working group, composed of 3 functional analysts and 6 senior programmers and in direct and permanent contact with the municipal Project Manager. The monitoring committee meets, at least, once a month. In these meetings, the Project Manager of the private counterpart presents a report on the advancement and the prevision of projects, indicating projected and utilized resources. The Municipal Project Manager is entitled to review and adapt the working plan, as well as the size and composition of the working group. Any changes to the working group have to be integrated by the private counterpart within a month’s time.
The Platform is based on a four-year contract between Telefonica I+D and the City Council. At the present, the initiative is in its second year of development. The budget of the four-year contract amounts to a total of € 4,800,000.00 (including a VAT at the rate of 21%). The contract is estimated to generate savings that outweigh the cost of the services; therefore, on the long-term the project should be financially sustainable and financed by the savings that are generated.
Valencia is the first Spanish city to develop an integral Smart City management platform based on cloud computing services. Cloud services allow for a faster deployment with less risk, greater capacity of calculation, and more efficient integration with the possibility of pay-per-use. In addition, the European Commission has recognized Valencia as the first European city to use the open standard technology FI-Ware in a real environment.
Globally, the VLCi Platform will have repercussions in:
The promotion of innovation and entrepreneurship by facilitating the development of new local business and ideas, and motivating the use of ICT in local trading.The quality of life by optimizing the response of basic and social services and providing greater efficiency and quality in the management of urban services.
The transparency and access to information and citizen participation through an increased interoperability between all the municipality’s services; and Open Data policies that encourage the creation of applications.
The decision-making process is facilitated by the transversal information provided by the platform that allow for a more integrated approach and thus, more efficient management of the services.
The main direct beneficiaries of the VLCi Platform are public servants, who will have access to information shared with other services in real time through dashboards or create reports through an easily accessible interface. The platform will both allow to measure city-indicators instantaneously and to compare these throughout the years.
The VLCi platform will also have considerable impact on the innovation ecosystem of the city by:
Companies
Entrepreneurs
Universities
Developing a transformative project involving more than 50 municipal services is a complex task, with the main difficulty being the coordination of municipal services and their transformation by introducing innovation in public procurements.
Another important difficulty encountered by the municipality during the implementation of the VLCi platform was to communicate the concept and the benefits of a Smart City and Fi-Ware standard to entrepreneurs, citizens and responsible municipal services. A strong communications strategy in media channels, social networks and public advertising was necessary, as well as training in Fi-ware for entrepreneurs and public servants.
As the City of Valencia is the first city to develop such a project and pioneered the implementation of Fi-Ware in a real-life environment, it means that the city has taken on additional risk. It would have certainly been an advantage to be able to evaluate the results of similar projects conducted in other cities.
The City of Valencia identified the following elements as key to ensure the success of a project such as the VLCi Platform :
