Schneider Electric Announces the Creation in Barcelona of Its First Center of Excellence Focused on Smart Solutions for Cities

Rueil-Malmaison (France), July 24, 2014 – Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management, announced the creation in Barcelona (Spain) of its first Center of Excellence focused on smart solutions for cities. The announcement was made by Julio Rodriguez, Executive Vice-President Global Operations at Schneider Electric, during a ceremony in the presence of Xavier Trias, Mayor of Barcelona, on July 22.

 

A view of the future Schneider Electric Center of Excellence in Barcelona

 

The mission of Schneider Electric’s Center of Excellence will be to gather the knowledge of the company on solutions for smart cities, thanks to the experience, the results and the successful Smart City solutions established worldwide. The center will offer solutions to the cities which will have economic and social impact, bringing concrete benefits for citizens. The work of the Center of Excellence will enable to guide and support the cities on their way towards a new paradigm in efficiency management, habitability and sustainability thanks to the implementation of smart solutions and the development of new business models.

 

“In the next 40 years we are going to experience an urban technological revolution. The ongoing concentration of the population towards urban cores and the growing shortage of resources will have important repercussions on mobility, air quality, healthcare service, etc., said Julio Rodríguez, Executive Vice-President Global Operations at Schneider Electric. Today Schneider Electric is working with over 200 cities in smart management projects. With this Center of Excellence we are enhancing our capacity to provide advanced solutions to the cities.”

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For more information, see the complete press release or visit the Schneider Electric Smart Cities webpage. Schneider Electric acquired Invensys in January.

Wonderware Software Helps AENA Manage Operations at Barcelona El Prat Airport

The gateway to the beautiful city of Barcelona is the El Prat Airport. In a typical year, over 35 million passengers and 96 thousand tons of cargo pass through the airport. AENA is responsible for the operations of the Barcelona El Prat Airport. AENA is one of the world's top airport operators, in terms of the number of passengers handled. More than 200 million travelers pass through AENA's 46 domestic and 15 international airports.

"Our systems allow us to be aware of what is going on in the airport infrastructures, and we manage the airport as an intelligent environment. The 'smart city' concept is very much in vogue nowadays. We can say without any doubt that the Barcelona airport is a smart airport - intelligent, able to manage its infrastructures and always self-aware."

– José Luis González, Director de Informática  

 

  

 

AENA's smart airport solution boasts a dynamic, intelligent infrastructure. The control environment for the airport management system handles over 1,000,000 signals. It includes the control of all escalators, elevators and passenger moving walkways; power management; air conditioning; and fire safety systems. It also involves monitoring support for the automated luggage transport system. This fully integrated, multi-hardware solution was made possible with the help of Wonderware.

Wonderware System Platform lets AENA manage a large number of processes in an integrated and simultaneous manner under a single platform. It provides an easy-to-use, flexible and scalable solution that allows AENA to create control templates that can easily be deployed by any of its multiple system integrator contractors.

Today, Wonderware is being used in all 46 airports that AENA manages all over Spain.

For more information, watch the new video, read the success story, or visit our Smart Cities Industry page on software.invensys.com.

Remotely Controlling Rail Station Operations in Spain with Invensys Wonderware Software

Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC) is responsible for providing safe, reliable and efficient rail transportation to more than 80 million passengers each year. Operating two of the country’s major transport lines, Barcelona-Vallès and Llobregat-Anoia, FGC must manage not only 120 miles of track, but also the 76 train stations which service the businesses and residents in the region.

 

As a public company managed by the Catalan Regional Government, the mission of FGC is to operate these rail services and infrastructure efficiently and effectively. Based on these goals, the company began an extensive organizational and technological reform strategy to enhance the management of its overall operations.

 

The creation of the Station Monitoring Center, operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, enabled FCG to manage the operation of all stations from a central location. Through the new remote-controlled model, the Center began overseeing the operations of everything related to a station such as ticket vending machines, CCTV, public address system, opening and closing of entrance doors, air conditioning, lighting, and numerous other functions.

 

Integrating all controlled operations into a single supervisory system through a common management interface was the next stage of the project. The Integrated Command Center was created for joint management of the two network Lines – Barcelona-Vallès and Llobregat-Anoia.

 

“The challenge we have set for ourselves as a company is one of excellence in customer service. Each year, we seek to achieve higher satisfaction levels from our users and Wonderware technology is an essential tool in achieving this.”

– Alicia Coca, Head of the Systems Development Department,

   Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya

 

For more information, read the complete success story. Or, reference our collection of Wonderware Transportation Industry success stories.

Smart and Sustainable Spanish Ecocity Valdespartera Relies on Software Solution from Invensys Wonderware Spain

Ecocity Valdespartera is the first urban development project in Spain to be governed entirely by bioclimatic criteria in line with the objectives of environmental sustainability contained in the Kyoto Protocol. Creating a city where bioclimatic management was built into the project’s development meant that integrating and running all of the city’s facilities with a centralized IT system had to be considered. The system had to efficiently manage everything from the drinking water supply network, sewage and rainwater treatment network, watering systems and electricity and gas supplies, to street lighting, pneumatic waste collection and the housing and environmental control network. Wonderware® real-time operations management software from Invensys, in conjunction with Microsoft® Windows® and SQL Server®, was selected as the best solution for overall management and analysis of this unique urban environment.

“One of the key innovations of Valdespartera from a technology perspective is the comprehensiveness of the integrated management system. Many cities have experimented with ‘smart’ components, but here we have a highly advanced model. Valdespartera is a unique example of how the cities of the future can be designed using data to make intelligent decisions on a wide range of public services.” – Jordi Rey, managing director of Invensys Wonderware Spain

Learn more in this Microsoft Touch cover story or visit our Software Solutions for Smart Cities area on wonderware.com.

AENA, Barcelona El Prat Airport

Wonderware Software Facilitates a Decade of Integration and Growth for Unprecedented Spanish Airport Expansion

Spanish Airports and Air Navigation (AENA) is a public company in charge of civil air navigation and airports in Spain. Its subsidiary, AENA Aeropuertos SA, manages 47 airports and two heliports in Spain and participates directly in the management of 28 other terminals throughout the world. In passenger count, AENA is the world’s leading airport operator with about 200 million passengers per year. 

The Barcelona El Prat Airport, together with the Port of Barcelona and the city’s Zona Franca area, serves as a vital hub for the region’s economy and is integral to tourism in the region. Recorded airport traffic in 2010 was 29,209,595 passengers, 277,832 operations and 104,280 tons of cargo.

To modernize the airport and prepare for future demands, major improvements to infrastructure and services have been made.

In 2000, 15 to 20 integrators were engaged in supporting the airport control systems. Each vendor implemented a separate solution, resulting in a multiplicity of technologies. The airport’s operators had to learn all of these different tools, which made it practically impossible for the facility to function smoothly.

Management searched the market for a solution. They wanted a control architecture that would provide:

• A single platform, to unite the control systems of the existing facilities and the future expansions
• Reliability, to support efficient and safe airport operations and avoid downtime in airport services
• Scalability, to handle the addition of a second large terminal building and integrate the annex buildings and other systems into one infrastructure
• Economy, to meet the budget restrictions of a public project

When considering their goals and plans for expansion, the choice for AENA was Wonderware software. It met management’s criteria, plus it offered the only non-proprietary solution, providing a better alternative to disparate systems and the high costs and operator challenges the airport had experienced in the past.

Today, the control environment of the airport is almost completely integrated, AENA is achieving operations excellence, and the Barcelona Airport boasts a dynamic, high-functioning infrastructure. According to the AENA team, the most outstanding benefit so far is that the solution enables them to manage a large number of processes in an integrated and simultaneous manner under a single platform – even with so many devices and signals with distinct technological languages.

“The centralization of operations that we get with Wonderware helps manage around 700,000 signals and is essential for a critical infrastructure like this. We can now quickly respond to incidents and also be proactive in optimizing management.”
– Jordi Asensi, Head of Systems and Database Management, AENA Barcelona Airport

Once the full expansion is complete, nearly 1,000,000 signals will be controlled under the unified platform. With Wonderware technology and the vision and teamwork of numerous executives and integrators, the Barcelona Airport is one of the most emblematic projects for AENA to date, and AENA’s commitment to Wonderware software as their standard for handling the 47 airports they operate in Spain is stronger than ever.

For more information, read the complete AENA, Barcelona El Prat Airport success story and/or reference any of our Wonderware Transportation or Facilities Management success stories.

Timelapse Video of a Smart City at Night

The city of Barcelona, Spain, has been mentioned a few times on this blog. In fact, we kicked off the blog last December with a post about Invensys' participation at the Smart Cities Expo World Congress held there. That major international event will be held in Barcelona again this coming November, and Invensys will be there.

Midnight Barcelona is a stunning timelapse video by Pau García Laita that offers a fast, modern look at the city at night. According to the description on YouTube, more than 20,000 pictures were taken and five months of work required for the project. It is an impressive reminder of city dynamics, and in this case those of a city widely recognized as a leading smart city.