When people started talking about smart cities, it was imagined that their future involved digitizing as many processes as possible with sensors, generating information that would have to find a use to make them work better. Over the years, the concept evolved, after seeing that other types of tools such as cameras or mobile phones could serve to organize cities more efficiently and allowed for faster change. This also led to wanting to make activities that affect cities intelligent, such as mobility, security, or the environment, which ended up becoming the great protagonists of the city of the future.
This transformation has also been experienced by the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), the smart cities congress organized by Fira de Barcelona for ten years. Precisely, with the celebration of its first decade, it will launch a new show, Tomorrow.Mobility, focused on new mobility, one of the sectors that is registering the most dynamism on the urban map. It has the support of EIT Urban Mobility, a European initiative that is responsible for imagining the mobility of the future from Barcelona. The new congress will coincide with the Smart City, with the aim of demonstrating that the cities of the future will not be reached without first resolving the mobility transition. Its first edition will be held from this Tuesday, November 16, to Thursday, November 18, at the Gran Via venue.
"Tomorrow.Mobility once again positions Barcelona as an international benchmark," defends Daniel Serra, director of EIT Urban Mobility for Southern Europe. Currently, many events are already organized around the world that want to discuss and share solutions on new ways of moving around cities, but, as Serra points out, Tomorrow.Mobility will benefit from the strength of Smart City, an event that was a pioneer when it was created and that has been consolidating its brand for ten years.
In this new congress, there will be space for conferences and stands. Among the solutions that will be exhibited, proposals such as an artificial intelligence program that allows reducing the costs of logistics companies, from Barcelona-based SmartMonkey; solar panels used to charge scooters, from Seville-based Solum; an electrified road to charge cars, from Swedish Elonroad, or a circuit of autonomous cars where different universities will compete to see which vehicle best overcomes obstacles, from the hand of the Carnet project, promoted by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and Seat. Other Catalan companies that will participate in Tomorrow.Mobility will be Shotl, Smart Point, Nemi, Bia Power, and Vonzu.
Return to in-person format
The celebration of the tenth anniversary of Smart City will also be accompanied by its return to an in-person format, after last year's edition opted for virtuality, adding 16,000 connected users. "The pandemic has meant more digitalization, but we have not been able to meet and share the solutions that have been made. With Smart City, the city will once again become the epicenter of the decisions that in a few years we will see in our cities," explains its director, Ugo Valenti.
Representatives from 400 cities and regions will participate, and an attendance of 10,000 congress attendees is expected, 50% less than before the pandemic. 70% will be international public, coming from a hundred countries. "A real recovery is already taking place," Valenti emphasizes. The event will not abandon the telematics format, with its own digital program for those who still cannot attend in person.
70% of the Smart City audience will be international, coming from a hundred countriesAnother novelty of Smart City will bethe arrival of Puzzle X, a show that will debate about the materials that must serve to build a better and more innovative world, such as graphene, nanomaterials, or quantum materials. This exhibition chose to locate in Barcelona thanks to John Hoffman, the top executive of GSMA, the entity that organizes the Mobile World Congress (MWC). Hoffman convinced its promoter, Zina Jarrahi Cinke, by highlighting the public-private collaboration that exists in the city and its scientific and technological ecosystem, ingredients that could help grow such an incipient idea.
In its first edition, Puzzle X will collaborate with local actors such as the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), the Mobile World Capital Barcelona (MWCapital), and the startup Inbrain Neuroelectronics, which is dedicated to designing small, intelligent systems based on graphene electrodes that can be implanted in the brain to treat diseases such as Parkinson's or epilepsy. As expected, Hoffman will participate in the inauguration of the new exhibition.