FiWare

SmartAppCity

JIG Internet Consulting is an advanced-services provider around ICT, founded in 2003 employing over 25 people, that provides value in Internet services to businesses and public institutions in an advanced-services environment through ICT tools and support; optimizing processes, increasing sales and enhancing the benefits of the clients.

Our experience and turnover in the field of Internet business consulting and Web and Mobile apps, and platforms development, as well as numerous awards, positioned the company as a leader in Internet communication in our area of influence.
Our project, SmartAppCity is a native app for smart phones addressed to local administrations. The app brings together all the city services, boosting the commercial sector, generating value to citizens and tourist, and improving the quality of life. Under a public-private partnership (PPP) framework, the city councils will show their open data provided by the FIWARE Platform to serve the citizens, and the city shops and businesses will offer their products and services.

The app SmartAppCity was created with a totally integrated vision to show and map all the massive information generated by the city (residents, visitors, services and infrastructure) in real time through the FIWARE Platform, providing real value information for citizens and tourists, improving their quality of life and generating wealth to the city.

SmartAppCity interfaces have been developed with an innovative, intuitive, and user-friendly design.

SmartAppCity, within the smart city concept, represents an important step towards the provision of innovative services that every city can provide to their citizens and to a more efficient management of the city services.

SmartAppCity improves traffic in cities using FIWARE, improves the management of services using technology to save costs and improves the quality of services provided to people. It provides an innovative service that its inhabitants would like to use making cities more livable: a better place to live, to study, to work, and to have fun.

SmartAppCity is based on a technological and competitive differentiation about what exists for the problem solution, as well as has a great market potential making relevant use of FIWARE technologies and the existing open data of the city.

Goals and challenges

SmartAppCity aims to be the first App that brings together all the city services and information on the FIWARE cloud, providing to the city administration a complete, innovative and modular app. Examples of the services provided by the app are: arrival information on city bus, tram or subway, traffic and beach cameras, alerts, news and municipal events, open pharmacies, gas stations prices, ability to report incidents and suggestions, tourist information and routes, city street guide, shopping, weather forecast, QR reading, augmented reality, public city bikes available, radars, public Wi-Fi zones, parks, free parking spots, electric vehicle charging stations, surveys… Attractive services provided but also promoting the commercial sector and generating value to the residents, tourists, public administration, and local businesses and shops; facilitating interaction between different agents and generating added value for decision-making and citizen participation.

SmartPlatformCity is the platform developed that tracks, analyses, shows, and maps all the information generated by the municipal citizen app in real time providing value information (Revenue Data) for the municipality and other administrations, citizens, visitors and local businesses.
The use of the city Open Data made by residents and visitors, is also a source of information, tons of useful, real-time and geo-positioned information. This information could be processed to bring intelligence and also, value-added information to the Municipality, citizens and local business about preferences, habits, customs and usages of the citizens and visitors.

SmartPlatformCity analyses this Big Data generated by the app mixed with all the existing city information and open data using data analysis, business intelligence, semantic and GIS (Geographic Information System). SmartPlatformCity provides reports, benchmarking, alerts, maps, semantic search tools and a lot of useful geo-located information and services of value.
SmartPlatformCity arises from the need of bringing intelligence and benchmarking to the analysis of all the data generated by the use made by the citizens and tourist of the open data of a city thanks to the municipal apps. SmartPlatformCity is a backend solution (external solution) for the municipal apps from every municipality.

SmartPlatformCity offers a tool that helps the municipality to make decision with cost reduction and a tool with high usability and accessibility providing fast searches of the data needed.

The choice of FIWARE

The integration of our SmartAppCity with FIWARE allows an almost instant implementation in new cities that are already using FIWARE. It provide us not only a standard technology but also a set of open tools (Generic Enablers) that allow us to develop more functionalities for our project.
Also, FIWARE provide us a huge community of companies and developers, events, opportunities, common spaces and visibility for our company and our project.

FIWARE is the ideal platform to develop this disruptive tool. We are using the Big Data GE Cosmos to store all the data generated by the municipal apps. We also provide info to the citizens about trends and most visited items thanks to the Identity Management GE. Orion Context Broker publishes open data, SpagoBI analyses all the Big Data and the Application Mashup WireCloud shows all the data and diagrams in our web SaaS platform.

Thanks to the FIWARE Platform and its “Generic Enablers” (GEs), intelligence was added to our solution. Analysing all the big data (hosted in COSMOS) and geo-positioned information provided by the use of the open data by the citizens and tourists, the FIWARE Platform is able to generate value-added information (Revenue Data). We have developed a business model to offer the municipalities and businesses this revenue data and the access to the SmartPlatformCity thanks to a SaaS model (Software as a Service).

The use of FIWARE technology

SmartAppCity is totally integrated with the FIWARE Platform that is built upon elements called “Generic Enablers” (GEs) which offer reusable and commonly shared functions making it easier to develop Future Internet Applications in multiple sectors.
SmartAppCity uses FIWARE technologies, services provided by instances of “GEs products” deployed in FI-LAB and parts of its components are deployed on the FIWARE Cloud. With all the big data generated with the use of the SmartAppCity application in every city and the FIWARE Generic Enablers, it is possible to add Intelligence to the application.
SmartPlatformCity improves the City Councils management and the services provided to their citizens, visitors and tourists. SmartPlatformCity will save money to cities because they will take better political decisions thanks to all the revenue data provided by the tool. This money saved could be used to other issues that will also produce social impact and better conditions for the citizens.

•    BigData Analysis – Cosmos: SmartAppCity uses this enabler to monitor, analyse and control all the Big Data. It allows us to upload big data files to HDFS by means of a SFTP injection server or HttpFS, and to store and analyse the Big Data generated by the use of municipal open-data apps.

•    Identity management – KeyRock: SmartAppCity uses this enabler for the users' access to information with secure and private authentication. SmartAppCity is able to provide individualized information to the citizens knowing and “personalizing” the uses of the app and save, in FIWARE information related to the uses.

•    Publish/Subscribe Context Broker -Orion Context Broker: it allows SmartAppCity to handle and publish context information and implement context awareness. SmartAppCity is able to create new Open Data useful for citizens, municipalities and companies that can be used by the app generating more information.

•    SpagoBI – FIWARE Data Visualization and Analysis GE: cities generate reports, visualize data statistics and KPIs and perform customizable data/KPI analysis: Business Intelligence and Big Data analytics. SpagoBI allows SmartAppCity to get insights on data and turn them into actionable knowledge for effective decision-making processes.

•    The Application Mashup – Wirecloud allows cities to see and consult all the information and data stored in FIWARE inside our SmartPlatformCity. Thanks to Wirecloud, we have built a web manager that provides cutting-edge end-user development, RIA and semantic technologies to offer a next-generation end-user centred web application.

Benefits and accomplishments

SmartAppCity improves the quality of life for citizens and visitors, allowing them to save time when traveling, being able to devote more time to work-life balance, family, leisure or other activities.
Thanks to the app, each smartphone becomes a sensor of what happens in the city. The citizen may, at any time, submit suggestions, complaints, incidents, reports to the Municipality sending photos, video, audio or text captured with their mobile, geopositioning the incidence for the Municipality to be aware of this situation and can resolve it as quickly possible.
SmartAppCity is fully adapted for people with visual disabilities, facilitating browsing through the app and access to the information contained therein. The adaptation of the application has been developed with the CERMI (Spanish Committee of Representatives of People with Disabilities). The proper operation of the iOS and Android phones can read aloud the contents of each menu and describes what the pictures show, which facilitates the use of the application for those who can not read themselves or have difficulty with it. The application allows people with visual disabilities a navigation simple, agile and at high speed; being able to access all services and multimedia content (audio-guides and videos).

SmartAppCity becomes for companies and businesses in a powerful Geomarketing tool: being able to offer promotions and events to users who are really close to their stores. The shops have a website designed especially for them where they can enlist geopositioned shops and business, being able to modify its own data, manage their shopping offering and know the number of visits that have obtained through the application.

SmartAppCity united with the FIWARE Platform promotes citizens’ awareness thanks to some of its services such as real-time displays of air quality in different parts of the city, the energy consumption (water, electricity, heating …) of public buildings and municipal sports centers, etc. And thanks to the application: it facilitates the use of public transport (information of stops, lines, arrival times, availability of public bicycles …). Finally, it also reduces the time of use of private vehicles in the city, because through the application traffic information is shown being able to visualize the traffic cameras in the city, it can be check in real time the available places in all the public parkings, the nearby available gas stations with their prices, the charging stations of electric vehicles, etc.

SmartAppCity brings transparency, bringing closer all municipal information (news, events, publications, announcements …) through the application, becoming a new communication channel for the Municipality which makes their management much more transparent bringing it closer to citizens. This also provides wider dissemination of all its activities.
The suggestions module promotes citizen participation. In every time and at any place in town, citizens can participate in municipal management by providing suggestions, sending notices of incidents detected or contributing with ideas or improvements.