Santander was chosen to become Europe’s test bed for a sensor-based smart city. The Spanish city is embedded with more than 12,000 sensors to help the government operate as efficiently as possible.

The gathering of data collected by the sensors will lead to significant improvements in how city infrastructure is used and to a better understanding of urban issues. This unique experimental facility will be sufficiently large, open and flexible to enable its scaling-up around the world.

The University of Cantabria has coordinated the technical deployment of the infrastructure and services, being responsible for technically guiding the digital transformation.

On the one hand, the research community gets benefit from deploying such a unique infrastructure which allows true field experiments while, on the other hand, different applications serving citizens’ needs will be deployed – typical applications and services for a smart city, including experimental advanced research on IoT (Internet of Things) technologies and realistic assessment of users’ acceptability tests.

Since 2010, 12,500 sensors have been measuring the amount of trash in containers, the number of parking spaces available, and the size of crowds on the sidewalks. Besides, sensors were also installed in vehicles, such as police cars and taxicabs, measuring air pollution levels and traffic conditions.

The data from these sensors flows to banks of computers that analyse the real-time information and give city officials the big picture, allowing them to adjust the amount of energy they use, the number of trash pickups needed in a given week or the amount of water to sprinkle on the lawns of city parks.

To attract the widest interest and demonstrate the usefulness of the SmartSantander platform, a key aspect is the inclusion of a wide set of applications. Application areas have been selected based on their high potential impact on the citizens as well as to exhibit the diversity, dynamics and scale that are essential in advanced protocol solutions and will be able to be evaluated through the platform. Thus, the platform will be attractive for all the stakeholders, e.g. industries, communities of users, etc. that are willing to use the experimental facility for deploying and assessing new services and applications, and Internet researchers to validate their cutting-edge technologies, including protocols, algorithms, radio interfaces, etc.

A scalable, heterogeneous and trustable large-scale real-world experimental facility

The main goals of the SmartSantander are to be a test bed for a sensor-based smart city, to lead to a better understanding of urban issues, to fuel the use of the Experimentation Facility among the scientific community, end users and service providers in order to reduce the technical and societal barriers that prevent the IoT concept to become an everyday reality, to develop new applications by users of various types, to validate approaches to the architectural model of the IOT, to evaluate social acceptance of IoT technologies and services and to develop a data market place, according to the Digital Single Market principles.

Some of the activities performed are environmental monitoring, outdoor parking management and driver guidance, parks and gardens precision irrigation, augmented reality, participatory sensing and joint R&D (university & industry cooperation). The ultimate impact is to improve the city efficiency using the real data driven from the sensors.

Awards and recognition

Awards received by the initiative include:

• Computerworld & Cio Iberoamericano 2012
• ENERTIC 2015
• Future Internet Award
• Gobierno Abierto
• Google Ciudad Digital
• Impuls@ TIC
• Innovación +Sostenibilidad+Red
• Innovation Hub 2017: Premio a la Innovación Transformadora
• Premio “Ciudad de la Ciencia y la Innovación”
• Premio Ciudadanos 2015
• RFID & Wireless IoT tomorrow’ 2017: Modelo innovador en la aplicación de la tecnología a los servicios urbanos
• Smart Cities 2013

Partners

Featured photo retrieved from smartsantander.eu