Smartiago

The Europe 2020 initiative "Innovation Union" recognises the importance of Public Procurement of Innovation and its high potential to boost innovation. In this perspective, public procurement of innovative products and services is essential to improve the quality and efficiency of public services, especially in a context of budgetary constraints. The initiative states that public administrations should use public procurement co-financed by the Structural Funds to increase demand for innovative products and services. Public Procurement of Innovation (hereafter PPI) is therefore an innovation promotion action aimed at fostering the development of new innovative markets from the demand side, and which pursues the following objectives:

  • · The improvement of public services through the incorporation of innovative goods or services.
  • The promotion of business innovation.
  • The impulse of the internationalisation of innovation focused on the local public market as a launching or reference customer.

The City Council of Santiago de Compostela has the SMARTiAGO initiative as a strategy to respond to the challenges of innovation, involving agents of the local, regional and national R+D+i system in the process. Its main objective is the implementation of the roadmap formed by a set of innovative technological solutions in the field of smart cities, aimed at making Santiago de Compostela the first initiative that seeks efficiency, maximum applicability and adaptation of R&D to the problems of Heritage Cities as a whole, so that the results are highly scalable, efficient and replicable in other cities or areas in which the Historical Heritage is a distinctive attribute. SMARTiAGO will allow companies with great technological capacity, the University and the R&D&I Centres of the local ecosystem to position themselves technologically in a new field, all of this by taking on new challenges in line with the ERDF 2014-2020 objectives.

The total amount of the project is 6.180.000 €, of which 80% (4.944.000 €) will be provided by the Pluriregional Operational Programme of Spain (POPE) 2014-2020 through the Agreement signed with the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities for the "SMARTIAGO" Project, and another 10% (618.000 €) will be financed by the Galician Innovation Agency due to the Agreement signed with the City Council itself.

 

The Smartiago innovation programme has the following objectives:

1. A new model of decentralised deposit and treatment of the organic fraction of waste, which makes it possible to achieve the objectives set by the EU.

2. A new form of relationship with citizens that rewards appropriate behaviour in terms of MSW deposit and street cleaning, increasing co-responsibility and transparency.

3. A new model for monitoring the quality of the service, especially in terms of collection and street cleaning in the historic centre.

4. Efficient use of the current loading and unloading model to reduce congestion and emissions.

5. Evolution of access and parking control, to avoid damage to historic pavements

and blockage of public service roads.

6. Improve energy efficiency, with sustainable luminaires, designed and manufactured under the circular economy model.

7. Enhance the value of heritage through ornamental lighting, while reducing maintenance and conservation costs.

8. Improve safety, using the infrastructure with sensor elements to analyse presence, flow of people and environmental quality (noise, wind). The Smartiago project has already been awarded by the Colegio de Ingeniería Informática, and is currently a finalist in the Procura + Awards, in the category of 'Public procurement and innovation of the year'; and in the European Innovation Procurement Awards (EUIPA) 2021, awarded by the Horizon Europe programme, with the support of the European Innovation Council.

9. European Innovation Council.