NEC helps Santander sustain the lead as Europe’s smartest city - New NEC operational control software module automates the management of city infrastructure in real-time to minimize resource usage and reduce operational costs -

London, May 7, 2014 – NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) has today announced that it is providing a new operational control software module as part of NEC’s Cloud City Operations Center to enable the city of Santander in Spain to improve the services it delivers to local residents by automating the management of its public infrastructure while reducing costs. The new plug-in to the existing smart city platform that NEC previously supplied will help Smart Santander track how water, waste, lighting, power, roads and other resources are used in response to real-time environmental conditions. This will help the city to minimise wastage, increase the timeliness of communications with local residents and free up staff to focus on longer-term strategic planning.

Over the last three years Smart Santander has been transformed into a city-scale research facility that is being used to test Machine to Machine (M2M) sensors and smart public services. It has deployed over 20,000 sensors and cameras to monitor and manage traffic congestion, parking and public transport availability, street lighting and pollution levels, refuse collection services and park irrigation systems and share this information with the public via a smartphone app and website. The project also tracks a wide range of environmental parameters, including temperature, pollen count, noise, carbon monoxide and ambient light levels.

 

In the first phase of the project, NEC developed the smart city visualization platform and multi-touch display screens in the Santander control demo centre. The solution visualises real-time and historical data from sensors across the city in easy-to-understand numerical, graph and map formats. It also checks that each sensor is functioning correctly, assessing the battery power level, communication link status and consistency of data collected.

 

Using the multi-touch interface in the control centre, Santander’s staff can quickly cross-reference key data sets, such as carbon monoxide levels with traffic, temperature, and issue alerts when air quality thresholds are exceeded, benefitting citizens with respiratory conditions. With NEC’s new control module, this process can now happen automatically, helping to reduce the workload for the city planners. With future evolutions of NEC’s platform, it will also be possible to manage discrete vertical services in an integrated way. This will, for instance, enable waste collection services to be automatically re-routed in the event of a road blockage and irrigation systems to be instantly switched on when sensors detect a drop in rainfall and earth moisture levels to protect plants, while avoiding water wastage during rainy periods.

 

Iñigo de la Serna, Mayor of Santander, commented, “We are impressed by the benefits NEC’s Cloud City Operations Center platform has brought to the city. The new software module will take this project to the next level. It means that technology can do what it does best – crunching and visualizing data and automating routine city management tasks in a timely way. While our expert city planners can focus on big picture thinking and making the very best use of public funds to improve the way in which we deliver our services to local residents.”

 

“Santander is taking a pioneering role in Europe in running real large-scale, holistic smart city services to improve residents’ quality of life, while reducing the impact of the city on the environment and its operational costs,” said Naoki Iizuka, President & CEO, NEC Europe Ltd. “NEC is pleased to be able to bring our unique expertise in integrating a diverse range of M2M sensors and an advanced big data analytic engine with our data visualisation and city automation platform to help make Santander’s ambitious smart city goals a reality.”

 

* * *

 

About NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation is a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. By providing a combination of products and solutions that cross utilize the company’s experience and global resources, NEC’s advanced technologies meet the complex and ever-changing needs of its customers. NEC brings more than 100 years of expertise in technological innovation to empower people, businesses and society.  For more information, visit NEC at http://www.nec.com.

 

NEC is a registered trademark of NEC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Other product or service marks mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners. (C) 2014 NEC Corporation.