In February GeoSpatiumLab has joined the initiative Smart City Valladolid and Palencia. This initiative held its first meeting in January 2011 and was created to promote and foster the unity of Valladolid and Palencia to deploy innovative projects applied to both urban settings like long-distance scenarios.

Within the initiative Smart City Valladolid and Palencia are different companies and organizations as well as the towns of Valladolid and Palencia. Among these participants are the Foundation Cartif (responsible for overall coordination of the initiative), Telefónica, Acciona, Iberdrola, Siemens or Libelium (company founded by students of the University of Zaragoza and specialized in works involving sensors).

Smart cities can be identified along six main axes:

• smart economy
• smart mobility
• smart environment
• smart people
• smart living
• smart governance

which means that it is not enough a technological development to have a smart city, but that a much more general work in different fields is required. Also, for the particular case of Smart City Valladolid and Palencia mobility is not limited to a single urban environment, but must consider the flow of citizens between the two cities.

So far there are five different axis at which the Initiative will pay attention:

Energy

• Holistic approach to the Smart Grid Management
• Electricity Market & Demand Response
• Demand Management Scenario
• Smart Grid Technologies Application
• Integration of Supply Distributed Energy Resources
• Energy Efficiency and Energy Savings
• Buildings for Sustainable Future

Environment

• Smart Sustainable Management
• Waste Management
• Air Quality

Logistics & Transport

• Smart Connected Urban Mobility: enhancing urban sustainability through accessible and efficient services
• Smart Transport Demand Management: point-to-point travel within urban areas and between the cities
• Electric Vehicles Ecosystem development: holistic approach to EV roll-out scenario

Citizens

• Electronic Administration
• Information Digitalization
• Administration Modernization
• Integration and Interoperability
• Accessibility
• Data Security and Confidence

Tourism

• ICT massive deployment to investigate, protect, preserve, restore and disseminate the cultural heritage
• Boost and promote new and more interesting tourism services
• Encourage Cultural Tourism
• Tourism for everyone

GeoSpatiumLab will collaborate with its developments and research on several of these lines. For example, the calculation of routes with public transport, administration of the geo-spatial information for municipalities or tourism applications are topics where GeoSLab has experience and invests in R & D.