Digital City Break by Ubiwhere: a Tile-by-tile Journey to the Future of Smart Cities

The Digital City Break: a tile-by-tile Journey to the Future of Smart Cities consisted of a reverse mission to discover more about successful cases in implementing the Smart Cities concept in Portugal. Entities such as FIWARE Foundation, ERTICO, AIOTI and Amsterdam Smart City were represented in the delegation that participated in this program, which included two days of visitation to several cities in Portugal, aiming to inspire the adoption of Smart City initiatives and projects through the demonstration of use cases where Ubiwhere worked and implemented digital solutions and practical examples already in operation in Portugal.

During these two, the entire delegation experienced several moments of entertainment and networking and got to know Portugal’s tourist heritage. This way, creating a unique opportunity to exchange experiences between players in the urban intelligence ecosystem was possible. Four cities will be visited during the two days: Guimarães, Vila Nova de Gaia, Porto and Aveiro. In each of these cities, we could contact the towns’ representatives and address current initiatives and prospects in the development and implementation of Smart City projects.

- Guimarães: we visited Guimarães City Hall and the Guimarães Integrated Operations Centre, a space-oriented to collect and monitor data from several sources about the city’s sustainability performance, aiming to become the European Green Capital.

- Vila Nova de Gaia: Gaiurb was our stop to visit. This agency deals with Urbanism and Housing issues, always considering the necessary community involvement for the success of the policies.

- Porto: the whole delegation visited the Centre of Integrated Management, an integrated city management centre focusing mainly on the efficiency and responsiveness of rescue, emergency, mobility and law enforcement operations, and PROEF, a Ubiwhere’s partner company in the execution of technological research and development projects.

- Aveiro: our last city on the itinerary was Aveiro, a Tech City that has armed itself with 5G infrastructure for the development of next-generation urban services. The entourage visited Aveiro’s headquarters, learned about innovative technology solutions from Ubiwhere, and learned about the Aveiro Tech Week initiative organised by Aveiro City Council.

Ubiwhere’s Urban Platform was in focus during the Digital City Break by Ubiwhere. A digital platform dedicated to efficiently managing a city and implemented in these four visited cities. Integrating information sources, warnings about traffic movements, electric chargers, car parks, the environment, events, or occurrences are some of the real-time information made available by the urban intelligence platform created by Ubiwhere. Its implementation in Guimarães was considered a "good practice" by the European Commission since it allows one to obtain answers to daily challenges, through digitalisation, based on data collected in an urban environment.

Thank you so much to all the guests: it was a great honour to receive you! Tile-by-tile, Ubiwhere is suiting the future of Smart Cities!

The video of this initiative organised by Ubiwhere is now available here!