City of Santander
The city of Santander in northern Spain, with a population of over 180,000, launched the "SmartSantander" project in 2010. In a first phase, 14,000 sensors were installed to measure air and soil quality, traffic, parking space availability, position and capacity of buses and taxis, etc. As more sensors and cameras have been continuously added, more than 20,000 devices now send their readings at short intervals. Shortly after its introduction, however, it became apparent that an integrated control centre was needed that could bundle the diverse data in a meaningful way, evaluate them and make them available to the public. The various departments responsible for sub-areas and a multitude of applications threatened to impair the quality of the evaluation as well as the user-friendliness too much.
In order for the control centre to work efficiently, it must be provided with a platform to which all sensors deliver their information and on which this information can be evaluated immediately. However, it turned out that the subsequent integration of the platform was complex, which continuously led to delays in the start date for the control centre.
This experience from Santander shows that, when a platform is introduced, the connection to applications and sensors, the periodicity of data delivery, the security concept, data ownership, access to data, user role profiles, responsibility for management and technical support must be defined as early as possible.
Further information:
Contact person:
Prof. Luis Muñoz
Network Planning and Mobile Communications Laboratory