Sectoral Focus - SMART CITIES

A smart city infuses information into its physical infrastructure to improve conveniences, facilitate mobility, conserve energy, improve the quality of life, identify problems and fix them quickly, collect data to make better decisions and deploy resources effectively, and share data to enable collaboration.

But infusing intelligence into each subsystem of a city, one by one - transport, energy, education, health care, buildings, water, safety, etc.- is not enough. A smart city for smart people should be viewed as an organic whole where attention is paid to the connections and not just to the parts and, above all, the Citizens. In our opinion, technology must be developed understanding that the most important connectors across multiple subsystems are the people, who turn the city from a mechanistic bundle of infrastructure elements into a set of vibrant human communities.

R&D and innovation in order to develop “a smart city for smart people” strengthens human bonds and services – communication, relationships, health, education, economic opportunity, timely assistance for those in need, disaster preparedness and relief, quality of neighborhoods, quality of life (sports, arts, entertainment), and the ability to create and maintain jobs. “In a smarter community, technology is used to enhance the human infrastructure just as it can enhance the physical one” (Informed and Interconnected: A Manifesto for Smart Cities, http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/09-141.pdf ) 

We build, promote and support R&D and Innovation initiatives for the realization of this view:

• Helping building R&D project ideas and concept notes and validating them against the State of the Art
• Searching for financial public support to make the ideas come true, particularly within Horizon 2020 (European Programme for R&D and Innovation, 2014-2020) (More information HERE)
• Searching for strategic partners and leveraging alliances
• Helping taking new solutions to the markets: Defining business models and market-entrance strategies, and searching for financial support, either public or private, for filling the gap from R&D to Innovation.
• Carrying out our own R&D, through our research division ITRB Labs, specialized in applying Artificial Intelligence to the development of the leitmotiv we have defined with our partners in this area: “Smart city for smart people”.

One of our favourite examples

RTDI is one of the partners developing a new concept for technology-enhanced citizen interaction, together with Ethemba Solutions and Grupo Braud

The Novocity project has been co-financed by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism within the National Plan for Scientific Research, Development and Technological Innovation 2008-2011. Project Code: TSI-020606-2012-23