Indra displays its integrated offering for cities of the future at the Smart City Expo World Congress

Indra will arrive at this new edition of the Barcelona Smart City Expo World Congress with a sample of the solutions that have positioned it as one of the few global companies capable of providing a comprehensive and integrated offering for facing the challenges of cities of the future. The multinational consulting and technology firm will take advantage of the event to unveil some of its most innovative technologies for areas such as energy efficiency, smart and sustainable urban transport, security and e-Government.

It will also display its urban platform (Indra Urban Platform for Smart Cities Management and Safety), the major city management centre that facilitates the exchange of information between various systems and offers a complete vision of the activities in order to adapt services to the actual citizen needs. The solution has been designed with two differentiated and complementary focuses. On the one hand, it has been developed based on Indra's HERMES system, which facilitates the comprehensive management of mobility, public transportation and urban infrastructures, applying concepts such as priority and intermodality to make mobility more efficient and sustainable in cities. On the other hand, it is based on SOFIA 2, the solution created by Indra following SOFIA that integrates and orchestrates information for smart cities. SOFIA (Smart Objects For Intelligent Applications) is a European R&D&i project in which the multinational consulting and technology firm has participated actively and that it has evolved and optimised so it is equipped with business capabilities.

Indra has transferred part of the experience it has acquired in this field to the city of A Coruña. The consortium, led by the multinational consulting and technology firm, is using SOFIA 2 as a basis to develop in A Coruña the first comprehensive government platform for a smart city in Spain.

Smart card and smart mobility management

The company will have a space in the Smart City Plaza--a reproduction of a city for companies to display their technologies in a real environment--where it will install a kiosk so visitors may obtain a personalised smart card and interact with its intermodality solution for single and flexible access to all the modes of transportation, including sustainable systems such as bicycles for last-mile transportation.  This contactless smart card is based on RFID technology and its objective is to establish itself as the key for accessing services that require identification, access control or payment in order to integrate all citizen activities in a single device so information can be cross-referenced and the management of city services can be optimised. 

Aside from the intermodality, visitors will also be able to discover other strategic lines of the comprehensive mobility smart management solution created by Indra, which will offer actual demonstrations in the Smart City Plaza. This is the case of the joint traffic planning and monitoring solution, which unifies control centres in order to adopt policies that promote the use of public transportation over private transport, manage alternative routes depending on traffic, and control the access to resident-only or loading areas, among other aspects. Visitors will also be able to see how the energy consumption of traffic elements (regulators, traffic lights, etc.) is monitored in order to consider more efficient technologies.  Medellín (Colombia), which received the 2012 International Sustainable Transport Award, or Curitiba (Brazil), are two top Indra customer references in this field.

Using a tablet to turn on the heat and receiving personalised virtual tourism advice

Other major novelties that Indra will bring to the congress include ZIGAMIT, an innovative solution developed with Gas Natural Fenosa for monitoring and controlling energy consumption and home comfort services, as well as the Virtual Tourism Advisor, an expert system that makes recommendations to tourists based on user preferences and other variables such as the climate or past activities.

A tablet will be available at the Indra stand for visitors to experience the benefits of ZIGAMIT. This energy management and monitoring solution makes it possible to view the electrical, gas and water consumption of a home or small business. It also includes additional elements for measuring the electrical consumption of specific points, connecting or disconnecting the power supply remotely, or adjusting the heating system. There are currently two pilot tests with actual users in Catalonia and Madrid.

On the other hand, visitors will also be able to interact with the Virtual Tourism Advisor (Smart Agent), a smart services platform based on an expert system and Big Data, mobility and Market Place technologies that interacts with citizens using natural language. The product's added value lies in its integration capacity with corporate databases.

Security is another key area that will be featured in Indra's stand. The multinational will display two control and dispatch posts for iSafety, its solution for the comprehensive management of emergency situations and security incidents in cities. The platform makes it possible to take advantage of the information gathered by the various smart sensors and systems that have been installed throughout the city for improving the efficiency of operations carried out by security forces. It also has a system that considers the various notifications and operations for the same problem or accident with a "single incident" vision so the response of multiple emergency services is coordinated quickly and effectively. The CISEM (Madrid Integrated Security and Emergency Centre), the CUCC (Single Coordination and Emergency Centre) in Buenos Aires, and the 091 centres are some of its most relevant customer references.

Lastly, it will also present iConsejo, a tablet application aimed at Boards of Directors and collaborative management teams that provides access to the documents and reports required by executives in real time and in a fully secure manner.

Comprehensive and integrated solution for smart cities

Indra has completed projects in all the activity areas that comprise a Smart City, and it is also one of the few global companies capable of providing a comprehensive offering in this field, covering the entire range from the strategic and technological plan to the management and integration of information. As a leading urban technologies company, it has extensive experience in applying intelligence to mobility, transportation, security, communications, location networks, e-administration and the identification of individuals, among other aspects. The multinational has carried out successful projects throughout the world for the smart management of all the areas that comprise a city.

Indra is the number one multinational consultancy and technology company in Spain and a leader in Europe and Latin America. Innovation is the cornerstone of its business and sustainability. The company has allocated more than €550 million to R&D&i in the last three years, making it one of the top companies in Europe in its sector in terms of investment. With sales approaching €3,000 million, nearly 60% of its income is from the international market. The company employs 42,000 professionals and has customers in 128 countries.