A smart city does not become smart on its own: it’s how data is managed that makes it smart. Now, “cities meet cities” at the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) to help create platforms and applications to enable intelligence.
The Internet of Things (IoT) not only makes smart cities possible; it is also what brings the challenge of connecting diverse end points and solutions and analyzing the resulting data to make sense of cities. HERE and Telefónica are working together to advance applications in the area.
At SCEWC, taking place in Barcelona from November 17-19, the companies will showcase how real-time open data can be displayed on HERE maps.
The cities of Porto and Aveiro in Portugal, partnering with local SME Ubiwhere, are providing access to data (environmental and events information, and public parking slots information, respectively) using the FIWARE NGSI open standard API (Application Programming Interface).
“FIWARE is an open initiative, targeted to create a sustainable ecosystem that will allow Europe, also other regions who wish to join Europe in this endeavor, to capture the opportunities that will emerge with the new digital wave,” explains Jesús Villasante, Net Innovation at the European Commission.
It’s built around four major pillars: the FIWARE Open Platform, the FIWARE Lab, the FIWARE Acceleration programme and the FIWARE mundus programme.
“The FIWARE Open Platform allows for vast amounts of data to be received and to be fed into other systems,” explains James Marugg, senior account executive at HERE.
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Smart can also be simple
Smart applications and services aim to deliver contextual intelligence — what people need, when and where it’s needed. The IoT is an unprecedented means for enriching this in cities. And recent technologies at large scale in the cloud have brought new ways to react to and extract insights from data to improve processes and create new use cases.
However, the lack of IoT platform standards hinders development of smart applications and services. This is where the FIWARE platform comes in.
Through simple, powerful APIs, FIWARE creates an ecosystem for developers and companies, and supplies an easy way to interact with and leverage the output of data from cities coming from different sources, including IoT data.
The platform provides the ability to convert intelligent, real-time contextual data into something valuable to the user.
From a HERE perspective: “We are able to add another layer of insight into the HERE platform; localizing it more and making it more specific to the user,” said James.
“With no standards and such vast amounts of data, we are trying to make it easier for users to pick and choose whatever pieces of information are relevant to them and put it into the context of their maps.”
Juanjo Hierro, Coordinator and Chief Architect of FIWARE says: “Great maps and navigation are a cornerstone of smart city initiatives. We’re delighted to be working with HERE.”
Going further
Earlier this year, 61 cities in 12 countries in Europe, Latin America and Australia launched the “Open & Agile Smart Cities” (OASC) initiative with the goal of furthering “the use of a shared set of wide-spread, open standards and principles, enabling the development of smart city applications and solutions.”
As part of this landmark move in the advancement of smart cities, FIWARE is at the core of the program.
HERE will also be at the forefront. James says: “As smart cities become a larger community, there will be new enterprise application types which will emerge. At HERE, we want to be on the front end of this and help develop business solutions using HERE data.”
“Everyone is aware of the availability of data and everyone is aware of the need to make the data intelligent and put it into context. We are on the brink of the IoT,” he concludes.
Regarding the event, Juanjo Hierro says, “There will be several relevant announcements related to FIWARE at the SCEWC. The OASC initiative will also announce the third wave of cities joining the initiative.”
The FIWARE booth will be located in Gran Via, Hall 2, Street E Stand 545.