BSC showcases the potential of supercomputing and AI to create the city of the future at the Smart City Expo World Congress

Identifying in real time risk situations that can cause traffic accidents, planning personalized evacuation routes in an emergency situation or developing a digital twin of urban areas that contribute to create fairer and more sustainable cities are some of the initiatives developed at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) that will be shown at the 2024 edition of the Smart City Expo World Congress. The event, which will be held in Barcelona between November 5 and 7, is considered one of the most relevant global events in the field of smart cities and urban innovation.

Supercomputers such as the MareNostrum 5, installed at the BSC, provide the computational power required to perform complex simulations that facilitate decision-making to advance the creation of smart cities. By making it possible to analyze the vast amounts of data produced by connected devices and other digital services, supercomputing becomes an essential tool for driving digital transformation in the management of urban areas.

The technologies developed at BSC in big data analytics, AI and computing infrastructure play a crucial role in the management of complex data, simulations and decision-making processes to ensure sustainability, mobility and safety, and thus contribute to an improvement in the quality of life and well-being of citizens.

BSC technologies at SCEWC

The BSC will be represented at the event by researchers from all its scientific departments (Computer Science, Life Sciences, Earth Sciences and Computational Applications for Science and Engineering), who will show the latest advances developed at the center in this field.

Eduardo Quiñones, researcher at the BSC Computer Science department, will lead a session showing how advanced BSC technologies are driving data-driven solutions in cities such as Barcelona and Venice for real-time management of critical urban problems, such as the risk of suffering a traffic accident or, in the case of the Italian city, generating personalized evacuation routes for each citizen in an emergency (Tuesday 5, 9.45h, Fira Gran Via, Hall 2, Orange Agora).

Jan Mateu, researcher at the BSC Earth Sciences department, will present CALIOPE-Urban, an urban-scale air quality system that incorporates the latest advances in artificial intelligence. Its objective is to help administrations to make decisions based on scientific evidence that contribute to reducing air pollution in urban areas (Tuesday 5, 10h, Fira Gran Via, Hall 2, stand 151).

Miguel Ponce de León, researcher at the BSC Life Sciences department, will present the MePreCisa project, a cloud-based platform for the analysis and management of public health in cities using big data, machine learning and simulations. This open-source tool uses mobility data, health indicators and different socioeconomic and environmental factors, such as epidemics and air quality, to create an integrated predictive model that allows to move towards a precision management of the health of citizens (Tuesday 5, 15.30h, Fira Gran Via, Hall 3, stand 50).

Fernando Cucchietti and Patricio Reyes, researchers at the BSC Department of Computational Applications for Science and Engineering, will present in both sessions the vCity project, a citizen-centered platform to develop digital urban twins, which allows to simulate different scenarios with different components such as air quality, mobility, sustainability or proximity with the aim of creating fairer and more sustainable cities. Representatives from 15 cities of the Eurocities network (Arezzo, Barcelona, Brno, Brussels, Budapest, Leuven, Lille, Mariupol, Oslo, Riga, Reykjavik, Tampere, Rome and Turku) will participate in the sessions (Wednesday 6, 9.30h, Fira Gran Via, Conference Center, Zone CC1 - Room 1.3; Wednesday 6, 12.30h, Fira Gran Via, Hall 2, Orange Agora).

During the three-day event, BSC experts will be present at the Barcelona City Council (Ajuntament de Barcelona) stand to showcase their latest applications in artificial intelligence, air quality, climate prediction, digital healthcare, urban mobility, crisis and data management (Gran Via, Hall 2, Stand 151).

BSC Smart Cities Technologies Catalogue

All the initiatives have been summarized in a catalog that includes the technologies developed at the BSC to advance towards smart cities:

Agenda

The following table summarizes the presence of BSC researchers at the event: