FiWare

Spero

The goal of this project is to develop and comercialise an innovative set of web-based products directed at organizations (public & private) that carry out activities related to management and maintenance of facilities and networks in an urban environment. Rooted in the name “Spero.City”, these products are based on the paradigms of the IoE, cloud computing, collaborative systems, social power and empowerment, paradigms that mark a shift to a new era of opportunity for consumers, businesses and governments. The product's basic functionality allows citizens and company clients or employees, who are daily in touch with the urban facilities/networks, by means of a mobile device to report georreferenced occurrences (anomalies, problems) which call for repairs or intervention. The system is conceived to interact with social networks and, through them, allows reports to be followed, commented and cross-checked (data will be used within an innovative approach for decision support analysis taking into consideration social aspects). Spero.City includes a professional backoffice that receives, organizes and analyses the incoming occurrences with scientific decision support tools. The tools inspect the relevance of the occurrences and rank/classify them, emitting at request automatic alerts for urgent cases and periodic reports. All this helps in designing optimised intervention plans taking into consideration economic, social, environmental and technical aspects. Incorporation of these tools is one of the more innovative aspects of Spero and adds to its value proposition. The system architecture is very flexible and continuously adapts to the specificities of each city or organization. FIWARE usage permits virtually unlimited scalability of Spero and its application at a global scale.

Goals and challenges

Spero aspires to make the “Smart City” concept come into fruition by bringing together the population, technology, and decision makers in an interconnected way. Awareness of the problems is the first step for solving them, but Spero.City goes further and gives authorities information on how to solve them in an optimised way, effectively making the city a truly smart one.

From a business perspective, we set ourselves a target of net income results of 2000 k€ by 2020 (from 2500 k€ EBITDA). During this period we expect to attract venture capital, so as to acheive exponential growth in the first years (particularly when US and emerging countries markets come to scene), and to continue developing Spero.City in several directions, following feedback from first customers, and auscultating the market and customers for opportunities to design and implement customized vertical applications.

The choice of FIWARE

FIWARE technology is a cornerstone of Spero.City because it allows scalability. Indeed, large volumes of data are expected as Spero.City goes global (500 k reports/day by 2020, even more considering IoT connection). Ability to handle that data quickly and reliably will be crucial. FIWARE will be used to store, categorize, and cross-check data, and then run algorithmic calculations over it, with rank/classification of occurrances and real-time alerting as output.

The use of FIWARE technology

The keyword of FIWARE use in Spero is “We make things BIG.” For this purpose the following Generic Enablers are used:
– Big Data GE (Cosmos): Cosmos is the right tool for parallel distribution of data processing (categorization, algorithms), whose results are used to generate alerts and reports.
– Complex Event Processing GE (ProTon): CEP avoids implementation of a full real-time alerting system.
– Object Storage GE: For storage of large volumes of binary data (photos, docs).
– POI Data Provider: For storage of georreferenced data.
– Context Broker GE (Orion): The FIWARE integrated broker service is the natural piece of the puzzle to bring all the other services together, as it handles large volumes of incoming data and quickly ships them to other modules.

Spero also uses GE Filab instances:
– Identity Manager GE (KeyRock): Ready-made login fallback for the general public.
– CKAN: Widely used and standardized open data broadcast instance. Spero will be generating and broadcasting this sort of data.
– Wirecloud: Simple user-friendly mashup creation. Client-side customizable automated reports.

Benefits and accomplishments

Spero CIty has attracted the attention of a major private sector IT/Electronics player and municipal authorities of both small and large cities. These entities have agreed to work together with our company to stress test pilot installations of Spero.City. The feedback provided will enable fine-tuning the service and envisioning vertical applications.
Spero's participation in the Soul-Fi accelerator programme has enabled the company to receive top level business and marketing coaching via the IPN incubator at Coimbra. We also had the opportunity to participate in major international networking events (ICT 2015, ECFI 2015), having made profitable contacts with other players in the sector and stayed in touch with the latest IT developments.