THROWBACK: City of Madrid Implements Large Smarter Cities Environmental Analytics Project

A Smarter Cities environmental analytics project looks like a brilliant idea. Smart Cities are growing across the globe. What does this mean? Well, city governments are seeking for possibilities to offer smarter ways to communicate and service citizens, businesses with their services.

One of the cities I have followed in the past years was Madrid. Madrid made already 2014 the strategic move to get into smart services across many areas. Allow me to share with you some insides.

The City of Madrid and IBM, through its subsidiary INSA, announced back in 2014 the largest environmental services management project in Spain, designed to improve city life for all of Madrid’s three million citizens. Using IBM’s Smarter Cities technology, this initiative is planned to help improve the delivery and efficiency of city services and provide citizens with new tools to interact and communicate with the city council.

The team of IBM put an Infographic together which illustrates the main pillars of the implementation.

The project “MiNT – Madrid iNTeligente” (Smarter Madrid) focuses on the environmental area. It is aimed at improving the management of urban public services and the quality of the services provided to the public, opening new communication channels with Suppliers Madrid City Council.

The contract, with an estimated value of 14.7 million Euros or approximately $20 million USD will use Big Data and analytics to transform the City of Madrid’s supplier management model, allowing the city to manage and pay each service provider based on service levels in an effort to improve the management of public services like street maintenance, lighting, irrigation, trees and green spaces, cleaning and garbage and waste management.

In Summary, this means the planned platform involves the following main pillars.

SUPPLIERS

The City Council will pay suppliers according to service levels and not according to the number of resources deployed to each activity.

INSPECTORS

City Council workers will examine the streets to send information on any incidents through their mobile devices. In this way, suppliers have real time-information enabling them to work efficiently and to assess the quality level of their services.

CITIZENS

Thanks to an open and participative government model, citizens can report incidents in the city. They can send a photo and localization information of the incident from their mobile devices. The system will send them confirmation of receipt and the solution. The status of the incident can be consulted online.

Ana Botella, Mayor of Madrid said, “The City of Madrid is working with the belief that innovation makes the most sense when it enables better services and provides a better quality of life for citizens.”

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“This project will serve as an example for other European capital cities which will be able to follow Madrid´s model as the first European capital with comprehensive public services integration, ” said Marta Martínez, general manager for IBM Spain, Portugal, Greece and Israel. “We are proud that the City of Madrid has relied on IBM Group for this innovative initiative.”

THE PUBLIC SERVICES MANAGEMENT

In the public services management Garbage Management / Cleaning, Street Trees/ Watering, Pavements, Public street lighting, Fountains and other facilities are part of the initiative. The citizens will gain more relevance in solving incidents, by opening new communication channels with the City Council. The platform provided by IBM will offer the Council tools to analyze the data in order to address the planned actions and the resources swiftly and efficiently. Integrating all the information offers a complete, updated view of:

• The different processes
• Departments
• Municipal services
• Services companies

Smart Cities and Big Data seem to represent a good combination and are properly equipped to serve the needs to support governments to succeed in their mission. Smarter Cities environmental Analytics project by Madrid shows a significant example where they journey for smarter cities goes.

Since one of the major factors in Big Data remains the time we will see in a couple of years if this service platforms can succeed. Madrid’s Smarter Cities Environmental Analytics Project is a great example of an active implementation. What’s your opinion on smart cities initiative? As a citizen of a city, you represent their client, what is on your list of priorities? Where would you wish to enjoy more modern services offered which can result in a happy citizen? Use our commenting section below.