The SCEWC has become one of top arenas for bringing together urban reality and technological advancement, and so it was only natural that REMOURBAN deliver some of its insights gained since the project’s inception in 2014. To achieve this, four project partners – Acciona, CARTIF, GMV and Iberdrola – put together a compelling line-up of speaking sessions at the joint stand alongside fellow projects GrowSmarter, REMOURBAN, Triangulum (SCC1 2014), REPLICATE, Sharing cities, and SmartEnCity (SCC1 2015).
The first speaking session came under the heading “sustainable districts and built environment”. Here building engineer Ignacio González Pérez (Acciona) and energy efficiency specialist Alfonso Gordaliza (Veolia) outlined REMOURBAN’s vision of achieving nearly zero energy districts using key examples of energy efficient retrofitting from the project’s lighthouse cities Nottingham, Tepebasi/Eskişehir and Valladolid. This latter city was also centre-stage at the Smart City Valladolid and Palencia stand when Acciona delivered a presentation entitled “REMOURBAN – financing of energy efficient retrofitting projects.
Curiosity was stoked because after the presentation people quizzed our colleagues specifically about private funding and how to engage with building owners.
Iberdrola’s Ana Pérez focused on the REMOURBAN framework for evaluating the sustainability and smartness of cities. During her talk, Ana was able to gauge a high level of interest in her topic by other lighthouse projects which are still defining their evaluation frameworks and protocols. Delegates from these projects were able to share the common aspects and challenges, and a number of direct contacts with partners from these projects were established at this time.
Delivered by Fátima López of GMV, the third of REMOURBAN’s speaking session explored ways to create a new culture of urban mobility based on concrete examples from the project.
In addition to these speaking sessions, CARTIF’s Miguel Angel García-Fuentes presented a paper on the “Characterisation of cities as a strategy for urban planning: Methodology applied in the REMOURBAN project” to which Iberdrola and Seraing contributed. The paper outlined how our project takes account of city characterisation as a means to better understand the urban dynamics and create a replication framework for the project’s findings. Learn more here.
In addition to sharing the REMOURBAN experience and vision, the team was also able to glean useful information from the other projects and stands. As Ignacio Gonzalez states “Being present here in Barcelona at such an event not only keeps us on the map as a project, but provides the best way to be informed about smart city interventions with regard to national stands (South Korea, UAE, Qatar etc.) and associations such as Smart City VyP.
Another interesting aspect of the SCEWC is the networking since it is a great way for municipalities to connect with the technology suppliers in the field of smart mobility, parking, public lighting and energy monitoring.
7 December 2016