Badajoz

The unstoppable advance of ICTs in cities and rural territories, and the social, economic and cultural context that sustains it, requires skills and competences that position us advantageously in new scenarios and environments of territorial innovation. In this context, the Provincial  Council of Badajoz has been able to adapt and anticipate the circumstances, and in 2018 it launched the initiative "Badajoz Es Más - Smart Provincia".

What is "Badajoz Es Más"?

The project "Badajoz Is More" is an initiative carried out by the Provincial Council of Badajoz with the aim of achieving more efficient services, improving the quality of life of its citizens and promoting entrepreneurship and innovation through technology and data governance in a region made up of 135 municipalities. The aim is to digitally transform the territory, favouring the creation of business opportunities, social improvement andsettlement of the population.

Traditionally, "Smart Cities" projects have focused their efforts on cities, renovation of historic centres, etc. However, "Badajoz Es Más" is focused on the transformation of rural areas, smart towns and their citizens, putting the focus on rural challenges such as depopulation of rural municipalities, the digital divide, talent retention or the dispersion of services. The aim is to avoid isolated "silos" and transform these challenges into opportunities by improving information management, through the exploitation of data in a productive and efficient way.

Citizens at the Centre

The "Badajoz es Más" project aims to carry out the digital transformation of the territory by making available to municipalities, companies and citizens the new technologies of IoT, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, etc. The main lines of the project are set out below.

Provincial Platform for the Intelligent Management of Public Services

It is the core component of the initiative, as it allows for the integration of information from any IoT device, information system or data source in one place for storage, visualisation and in a single place for storage, visualisation and analysis. Specifically, data is collected from a variety of sources: the various sensors of smart solutions deployed in the region, web services and applications, citizen feedback and social networks.

All information is collected on a based on the open source standard FIWARE an initiative promoted by the European Commission that provides the capacity to homogenise data (FIWARE Data Model) and favour its interoperability. Built according to the guidelines set by AENOR (UNE 178104), it has a central module Orion Context Broker (OCB) which allows the entire information life cycleto be managed. In this way, it offers the ability to centrally monitor and manage a scalable set of public services through internal dashboards. 

The  platform is "multi-entity", i.e. it provides information, knowledge and services to both the Provincial Council itself and its associated Municipalities (also known as "Smart Villages"). The visualisation of the different information exploitation models processed at the different levels of the Platform is carried out on different dashboards, which can provide service to a specific municipality or locality only showing its data and services, or also provide a global view of all the services and data at the level of the Provincial Council of Badajoz.

Some of the information collected on the platform is also made available to third parties through various channels:

• Portal of open dopen data portal. Collected data that can be opened to third parties for reuse is shared through its open data portal. In it we can find information as diverse as real time data on the beaches with blue flags blue flag beaches in the region (air quality, water quality, noise pollution, capacity, etc. are monitored) or traffic flow, which makes it possible to predict traffic jams.
• Portal for citizens Digital Province Badajoz. This portal offers information on the solutions currently implemented in the province and their data in real time in a user-friendly way, with a simple user experience that allows non-technical people to access the projects developed.

The following graph shows the cycle of information, from its collection, through the platform and distribution to the different channels. All this under strong data governance.

Efficient public services

In addition to the implementation and start-up of the Provincial Platform for the Intelligent Management of Public Services, this project has already integrated various existing services or "verticals" for:

• To start implementing these new services in the province and to be the example and the "spearhead" of this technological transformation.

• Show the benefits of the implementation of these technologies in order to disseminate and demonstrate them, with the aim of causing sufficient impact so that other local councils and organisations will gradually join the initiative.

There are currently more than 40 companies sending data to the Provincial Platform, more than 60 integrated data sources, more than 800 connected devices, more than 500 transactions per minute... It should be noted that work is underway to ensure that the new calls for tender include a clause so that data from the various works financed with public money can also be sent to the platform.

The idea is to be able to standardise management, so that the solution that has been implemented in one municipality can also be used in another. This not only improves efficiency, but also makes it possible to compare results between municipalities. You can visualise some of the services already implemented in the Province, as well as their Dashboards built from the Provincial Platform at this video.

Innovation Ecosystem

In order for the initiative to reach its target audience, the Provincial Council of Badajoz has developed an innovation ecosystem that serves as a meeting point for the Badajoz Provincial Council:

• Citizens, who demand these services.

• Entrepreneurs and educational entities, which have an interest in these technologies.

• Companies, which have the capacity to implement these solutions.

• Public entities, which can implement this type of project.

The aim is to facilitate and provide the necessary tools, knowledge and advice so that the projects that emerge from this meeting can be carried out.

At the core of this ecosystem is a physical innovation centre called the FIWARE Space. FIWARE Space carries out tasks such as the organisation of events for the dissemination of Smart technologies and concepts among companies and citizens, demonstrative and training workshops, Hackathons with universities and study centres, etc. It also has a Showroom for the exhibition of solutions, organises financially endowed Challenges and is present at national and international congresses.

In addition, they carry out mentoring work for companies and other entities. In total, around 40 companies have been mentored by FIWARE Space, launching their own solutions on several occasions on the FIWARE Market, or proposing the generated data models as standards for the entire global ecosystem. These companies are offered a free service to acquire the necessary knowledge to work in a standardised way, generating uniform data for the rest of the region, and to connect their solutions to the platform, helping and advising them on the challenges that may arise.

One of the keys to FIWARE Space is its open nature, having signed many collaboration agreements and agreements with both local and international entities. For example, work on the standardisation of advanced data models for tourism is ongoing with the Future Cities Institute (Argentina). For those who would like more information, you can follow your centre's activity through its weekly blog.

Next steps: convergence with Data Spaces and Gaia-X

As a result of the collaborative and open nature of the project, the Data Space concept fits perfectly with the philosophy of "Badajoz is More". The Badajoz Provincial Council currently has a multitude of verticals with interesting information for sharing (and future exploitation) of data in a reliable, sovereign and secure way. As a Public Entity, comparing and obtaining other sources of data will greatly enrich the project, providing an external view that is essential for its growth. Gaia-X is the proposal for the creation of a data infrastructure for Europe, and it is the standard towards which the "Badajoz es Más" project is currently converging, as a result of its collaboration with the gaia-X Spain hub.

When launching an open data initiative, it is necessary that everyone involved in its development is aware of the benefits of open data, and that they are clear about the processes and workflows needed to achieve the goals. This is the only way to achieve an initiative with up-to-date data that meets the necessary quality parameters.

This idea was clear to the Alba Smart Initiative, which is why they have created various materials that not only serve to provide knowledge to all those involved, but also to motivate and raise awareness among heads of service and councillors about the need (and obligation) to publish as much information as possible for the use of citizens.

What is Alba Smart?

The Alba Smart project is jointly developed by the city councils of Almendralejo and Badajoz with the aim of advancing in their development as smart cities. Among the areas covered are the control of tourist mobility flows, the creation of an innovation hub, the installation of wifi access points in public buildings, the implementation of social wifi and the management of car parks and fleets.

Within the framework of this project, a platform has been developed to unify the information of devices and systems, thus facilitating the management of public services in a more efficient way. Alba Smart also incorporates a balanced scorecard, as well as an open data portal for each city council (Almendralejo's and Badajoz's are available here).

The Alba Smart initiative has the collaboration of Red.es through the National Plan for Smart Cities.

Activities to promote open data

Within the context of Alba Smart, there is an Open Data working group of the Badajoz City Council, which has launched several activities focused on the dissemination of open data in the framework of a local entity.

One of the first actions they have carried out is the creation of an internal WIKI in which they have been documenting all the materials that have been useful to them. This WIKI facilitates the sharing of internal content, so that all users have at their disposal materials of interest to answer questions such as: what is open data, what roles, tasks and processes are involved, why is it necessary to adopt this type of policies, etc.

In addition, on the public part of the Badajoz website, both Transparency and Open Data have shared a series of documents included in this WIKI that may also be of interest to other local initiatives:

Contents related to Transparency

The website includes a summary section with content on TRANSPARENCY. Among other issues, it includes a list of ITA2017 indicators and their assignment to each City Council Service.

This section also includes the regulatory framework that applies to the territory, as well as external references.

Content related to open data

It also includes a summary section on OPEN DATA, which includes the regulations to be applied and links of interest, in addition to:

• The list of 40 datasets recommended by the FEMP in 2019. This document includes a series of datasets that should be published by all local authorities in Spain in order to standardise the publication of open data and facilitate its management. The list generated by Alba Smart includes information on the local council service responsible for opening each dataset.

• A summary of the implementation plan followed by the council, which includes the workflow to be followed, emphasising the need for it to be carried out continuously: identifying new sources of information, reviewing internal processes, etc.

• A series of training videos, produced in-house, to assist colleagues in the preparation and publication of data. They include tutorials on how to organise data, how to catalogue data, and the review and approval process, among others.

• A (sample) manual on how to upload a file to their open data platform, which is developed with CKAN. It is a practical document, with screenshots, showing the whole process step by step.

• The list of vocabularies they use as a reference, which allow to systematically organise, categorise and tag information.

Among its next steps is the presentation of the datasets in the map viewer of the municipality. Data from the portal is already being fed into the corporate GIS to facilitate this function in the future.

All these actions are intended to ensure the sustainability of the portal, facilitating its continuous updating by a team with clear working procedures.