Who we are
The Institute of Smart Cities is a research institute of the Public University of Navarre focused on the design, analysis, implementation and optimisation of smart environments. It brings together a multidisciplinary team of excellence, from 7 departments ot the university, with a great capacity to attract projects, both competitive in public calls and technology transfer with companies.
Presentation
The notion of smart city corresponds to urban areas. It includes everything related to the use and management of various resources (electrical power, road traffic, water, waste) through the combined use of sensor elements and distributed communication networks. It aims at setting up an urban area where it is possible to gather a great amount of data on the environment and keep a high degree of interaction of users and devices in an integrated and efficient manner.
The Smart Cities’ Institute’s activities focus on technology lines which will make an impact on various levels:
- Social – to help cities become smart cities.
- Strategic – to contribute to cities’ development policies.
- Technological – to promote the alignment of the different technologies and adjust them to the needs of the various players.
Institute of Smart Cities is an R&D institution focused on the design and development of technology and services for smart cities. These aim at using and managing a variety of resources in an efficient and integrated manner. In our view, the combined use of detection elements and distributed communication networks is basic to achieve a context in which it is possible to gather a great amount of data on the urban and rural ecosystem and achieve a high degree of user-device interaction.
According to the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC) the strategy and activity of the SCI focus on five areas which offer a really innovative potential:
- Sensors and sensor networks: wireless sensors for different environments and infrastructures, optical fibre sensors for energy efficiency, bio-medical sensors, structural monitoring of infrastructures and civil work or environmental monitoring, etc.
- Information and communication technologies (ICT): In this line, the traditional communication infrastructures get combined with new high-capacity and/or very low-energy consumption mobile communication protocols. Some examples are advanced settings of aerials (multifunctional aerials) or wireless communication systems of great bandwidth at millimetric frequencies.
- Energy: Development of new renewable energy sources, their integration in smart electrical networks and micro-networks, and the power electronics linked to them.
- Big Data: It includes those activities related to data mining or artificial intelligence, as well as privacy and access to a big amount of data, very much linked to anything related to providing e-services for public administrations, companies, health care systems, etc.
- Facilitating systems: This is a cross-cutting research line aimed at supporting other technologies in the field of organizational, technical, and legal decision-making for the implementation of on-line administration and governance services such as e-health or e-learning. It involves designing environments with accessibility conditions and the integration of different groups, as well as optimizing the use of all types of resources.
The activities of the ISC are necessary to improve the state of the art in the three main areas of SCC:
- Near-zero or low-energy districts: energy, sensors, ICT, and enabling systems
- Integrated infrastructures: sensors, ICT, energy and big data
- Sustainable urban mobility: sensors, ICT, energy, big data and enabling systems
The global approach allows ISC to provide replicable, balanced, and integrated solutions to increase the use of renewable energies, optimised energy efficiency measures within economically acceptable conditions, and simultaneously ensure better living conditions for citizens.