Speaker Series on Data, Analytics & Cloud – Smart Cities and Data

Last Thursday, November 23, 2017 we had our second session of the Speaker Series. In this occasion was about Smart Cities and Data in our Master on Science in Business Analytics program.

Data is starting to have its own role in the field of Smart Cities. Since quite some years we talk of Open Data and its potential to unleash new and novel apps, but in this occasion we wanted to focus more on Big Data and Data Analytics in Cities. This is a topic that is very link to many others that we wanted to explore with the help of 4 knowledge speakers.

First Igor Calzada from the University of Oxford, discussed the processes of Data Devolution in Europe. How Data and data governance is progressively being decentralized and competences devolved to nations, regions or cities. Related concepts such as unplugging were extensively discussed around the case of four European cities.

Carles Carrasco from Eixos and IESE business school presented the linkage between Data and the Digital Transformation that the Public Sector in general and Cities in particular so urgently need. Together with this transformation already very well understood in the private sector, a new one is emerging: The Analytical Transformation that aims to make our cities Data Driven.

Gregori Mora from Diputación of Barcelona showed us some Big Data projects in action and presented an IoT platform, Sentilo, widely used in Barcelona. This is one of the first examples of and Open Source IoT platform built ground up by cities.

Rosa Paradell, from i2Cat, an organization of the Technical University of Catalonia presented some of the ambitious projects that they are working on Big Data and IoT, ranging from intelligent traffic lights, to connected cars or trash cans that communicate.

As always, before the Speaker Series I had the opportunity to have a conversation around the politics of Data with Igor Calzada, here is the result