Smart Cities / Smart Grids

Description

Applying ICT to the energy sector means significant savings in operating costs, improving energy efficiency and optimizing the timing of services (reducing tasks' execution times  and achieving better synchronization).

The dramatic development of the Internet of Things (sensor networks, RFIDs, etc..) and mobile data communications (M2M, Mobile Broadband, etc.) has improved the provision of many urban services with unprecedented performance, limited only by the financial capacity of the governments in charge. However, there is a lot left to do: applying ICT to cities and grids is a long-term challenge where cooperation and partnership between public and private sectors will play a big role. In any case the race for the urban intelligence has already begun.

Many research lines must be addressed to create smart cities. The IIiA has focused on the following topics:

• Smart Grid: AI-based new approaches to monitor the quality of electrical energy and new measures to improve energy efficiency; Monitoring and fault detection in electrical power networks and efficient restoration of the network.

• Control Systems: Control, monitoring and fault detection in mechatronic systems and smart structures.

• Route optimization for vehicle fleets.

• New methods of information visualization in order to support decision making.

Results arising from research in this area have been transferred to both public institutions and private companies.

You can download a poster with the most relevant smart cities / smart grid projects carried out by the IIiA.