On November 5, 6 and 7, Barcelona hosted the Smart City Expo World Congress, the biggest and most influential event in the world regarding smart cities and urban innovation.
One of the opening sessions of the conference was the shared panel “Big Data and AI for Enhanced Urban Decision-making: Venice & Barcelona”, formed by the researcher from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC), Eduardo Quiñones, and principal investigator of the ASCENDER and EXTRACT projects; the councillor of the city of Venice, Enrico Gavagnin, and the representative of the Barcelona Regional, Marc Montelló; all moderated by the journalist Ruth Gumbau.
On November 5, the SCEWC Orange Agora was filled with more than 130 attendees to hear how the use of AI and Big Data technologies can help administrations make better decisions to respond to the most urgent urban needs such as mobility and crisis management. These technologies were detailed during the session by researcher Eduardo Quiñones, who develops them in the projects he leads.
Furthermore, challenges such as those faced by the Italian city of Venice and their management were also explained by its representative, Enrico Gavagnin, who highlighted the important collaboration in the EXTRACT project, led by Quiñones. In turn, the air quality of the city of Barcelona and the management to improve and reduce the effects of pollutants were presented by Marc Montlleó, from Barcelona Regional, this also being a use case of the ASCENDER project.
At the end of the session there was an opportunity to open a question time for the audience, who raised some doubts that could be answered by the 3 panellists.
Finally, it should be noted that ASCENDER project was also included in the Technology Catalogue prepared by BSC for the Smart City and was available at the centre’s stand during the 3 days of the congress, as well as an online version on the website.
You can download the presentation shown during the session at the following link.
And you can see the panel in its entirety through the following video: