Case Studies ( M )

Barcelona’s Smart City Strategy has a holistic view of the city, comprising several projects that resort to technology as a transversal tool to manage the city’s resources and services in a more efficient way. The final goal is to achieve a sustainable social, economic and urban development, thereby improving the quality of life of its citizens.

The project for Masdar City was launched in 2008 with the aim of developing the most sustainable eco-city in the world. Situated in a strategic location, it is only 20 minutes away from downtown Abu Dhabi, and 40 minutes from Dubai.

Lamu, a small city in Kenya, had been experiencing a severe lack of health experts and the public healthcare system was inefficient and low quality. Citizens often had to travel long distances (a time consuming and expensive process) to get proper care, which led to frequent delays in diagnosis and treatment and, consequently, citizens’ health condition worsened.

Model City Mannheim (MoMa) was a pioneering project in Germany, carried out from 2008 to 2013, that was created in the scope of the country’s E-Energy funding programme. It connects every household in the city to a smart energy network (a smart power grid) that maximises renewable energy use.

The city of Montego Bay, in Jamaica, is growing rapidly and therefore it is facing a series of challenges, such as traffic congestions, high crime rates and occurrence of natural disasters.

The city of Maputo faced many health and safety problems related with insufficient and poorly managed waste collection. These issues have been properly addressed with the introduction of MOPA – Monitoria Participativa in 2016. MOPA is a web-based platform for participatory monitoring of the delivery of public urban services, namely waste management issues, in the city of Maputo.

The capital of Russia has been increasingly recognised at international level for its smart city efforts. Besides the free and extensive Wi-Fi network that citizens can access in the public transportation system or using one of the 1,100 public hotspots throughout the city, 99% of Moscow’s territory is covered by 4G and smartphone penetration rate is 65%.

The Smart City Lab is a government entity of the municipality of Moscow that was formally created in August 2016 with the main goal of searching for innovations and applying new disruptive technologies that will make the city better.