Living lab built at Porto shows results

The aim - to turn the city of Porto into a living lab – has reached its first milestone and the first results were presented at the second edition of the Future Cities Conference, which took place on the 28th January, at the Mosteiro São Bento da Vitória.

Under the theme "Porto: Living the Future", the goal of this international conference is to bring together representatives of local government, academia and industry.
Funded by the European Commission under the FP7 Capacities framework, the Future Cities Project is providing the city with sensors and equipment in order to improve mobility, safety and quality of life of citizens.

Rui Moreira (Mayor of Porto), Emídio Gomes (President of CCDR - N), Filipe Araújo (Councilman for Innovation and Environment of the Municipality of Porto) and Commander António Leitão da Silva (Municipal Police) were just some of the region representatives who had the opportunity to share their visions on the work developed by the project. With the presence of speakers from major global companies such as IBM and Cisco, the 2014 Future Cities Conference aimed to present the work developed during the first year of the project but also to raise the discussion on some issues of the future cities such as sustainability mobility and information and communication technologies.

For more details, please read all the articles and interviews published on the Portuguese press at our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.626785507370151.1073741827.463148687067168&type=3) and see some photos of the event at http://www.flickr.com/photos/futurecitiesproject/sets/72157640581725114/
Also, the speaker’s presentations are available at http://www.slideshare.net/futurecitiesproject/edit_my_uploads



One year of the Future Cities Project
During the first year of the Future Cities project, 817 devices have been installed throughout the city of Porto. These sensors monitor several events such as traffic, pollution, noise or even levels of stress of bus drivers.
The Future Cities project is implementing a testbed at an urban scale. This platform consists of more than 600 nodes and involves three interconnected subplatforms: Vehicular Ad- hoc Network (VANET), UrbanSense and SenseMyCity.

Vehicular Ad- hoc Network (VANET) is the largest vehicle-to-vehicle communication platform in the world. It consists of hundreds of networked vehicles, including 400 STCP buses. The vehicle-to-vehicle communication, in real-time, allows the collection and analysis of data that may result in the optimization of routes and any relevant consequences in terms of energy and environmental consumption, airway and public transport networks management.

SenseMyCity is an application for smart phones. Through sensors, the SenseMyCity application allows the register of the daily routine of users for further analysis, including fuel consumption per trip, the possibility of car sharing or stress levels. With this application, designed for use in research projects in various areas such as smart mobility and psychology, users can record their routines knowingly and voluntarily. Recently completed, the SenseMyCity is being tested and the next project in which it will be used will be with the police, for the analysis of the professionals’ well-being.

UrbanSense is a platform that is being implemented in the city of Porto in order to collect data, enabling the development of future research projects in areas such as psychology, spatial planning and environment, among others.
This platform is being developed at an urban scale, using different types of sensors, fixed and mobile, registering image, noise, air quality, weather, etc. Fixed sensors are distributed throughout downtown Porto allowing the collection, and after that the correlation of data such as the number of people or vehicles, levels of pollution, noise, radiation or air quality. On the other hand, mobile sensors installed on buses allow the gathering of information from some areas where otherwise it would not be possible.


Future Cities and I-City in figures

• 2.3 million euros of community investment

• 40 researchers, including 20 PhD studentships

• 3 postdoctoral researchers and 4 technicians hired full time

• 813 acquired devices, including:

624 On-board units (" boxes ", nodes or communication points for vehicles)

75 environmental sensors (temperature, humidity, light, carbon dioxide, etc.).

60 image sensors

45 biometric sensors (heart rate, EKG, sleep quality)

• 50 scientific papers published;

• 67 partners (national - STCP, CM Porto, Universidade de Aveiro, IT, Porto de Leixões, UPTEC, CEDT, IBM, Porto Digital, Geolink, Raditáxis, IBM, Portugal Telecom, Wavecom, Biodevices, TICE.PT CEIIA, CISCO, INESC Porto, IEETA, INTELI, Dell, Critical Software, Soares da Costa, Smartwatt, HP, Metro do Porto, Microsoft, EDP Inovação, Wipro, Portic, Schneider, Nanium, EDIGMA, Ubiwhere, Uartrónica, GisGeo, CGI, InterHost, Creative Systems, Novabase, Nokia Siemens Networks, Efacec, ISA, Shortcut, Microfil, InovaRia, InovaRetail, Voice Interaction, Multicert, Accenture, Aream, Petratex, Anubis Networks, EDI Soft - and international - KTH, UCL, Supélec, MIT and CMU).

• Approximately 700 end users involved.

Länder

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia, United Kingdom