Monday, 11/27/2017
The SusCity project counts on the intervention of
the ALGORITMI Research Centre (ALGORITMI) of the School of Engineering of the
University of Minho (EEUM).
The SusCity
project focuses on developing and integrating new tools and services to
increase the efficiency of urban resources – with minimal environmental impacts
–, by helping to promote economic development and preserve real levels of
reliability. This project aims at developing services and applications that allow
researchers to perceive the impact of changes in the cities on the level of
citizens’ well-being. SusCity is carried out by a Consortium of institutions of
the national scientific and technological system and also other public and
private entities.
“There are
several sources of information integrated in this project, with the aim of developing
a Big Data platform that will integrate the data coming from these diverse
sources. At a later stage, a decision maker will be able to look at analytical
panels, dashboards, - through the analytical mechanisms made available for the
analysis of these data – and realise what is happening, for example, withenergy
consumption. Therefore, he is able to draw scenarios and notice how the city
can evolve from a sustainable perspective”, Maribel Yasmina Santos, coordinator
of the development of platform of Big Data Analytics and researcher at
ALGORITMI, explained.
SusCity
presents forecasts based on data on energy consumption, energy certifications,
building materials, smart meters, GPS coordinates, sensors and simulations,
among others. From these indicators, and taking into account, for example, the
energy component, a diagnosis of the energy consumptions of buildings is presented,
trying to make them more sustainable. The research is at its final stage, but
it is expected that the dashboards will be made public during next year. In the
future, a real-time data presentation feature can be developed to boost the
practical effect of this platform. In a first phase, only the data on the Parque
of Nações and Olivais area in Lisbon (where the project has its test-bed) will
be available, but the platform could be extended to other areas of Lisbon and
other cities. For that purpose, the developed data platform will require data
on those areas and the simulations or models calibrated for them.
Another option
is the inclusion and processing of data on the platform by citizens, on a
voluntary basis, an alternative that could help raise awareness on the
importance of energy efficiency, as Maribel Yasmina Santos clarified: “Citizens
will be able to make their own data available on the platform, making it accessible
to other citizens, helping to share and expand this resource”, the researcher
concludes.
The SusCity
project is developed under the MIT Portugal programme, with a duration of three
years (January 2015 to December 2017). It is funded by the Foundation for
Science and Technology and includes a wide range of partners, including the
University of Minho, the Universities of Oporto, Coimbra and Lisbon, EDP
Distribution, LNEG, ADENE, R&D Nester, Novabase, IBM, ITds or MIT.
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info: http://suscity-project.eu/inicio/
