City of Sabadell, Spain

Sabadell is a Spanish City of 213,644 inhabitants (2014) and 37.87 km2, located in Catalonia (Spain). It belongs to Barcelona’s Metropolitan Region, where around 2/3rds of the Catalan population lives.

The Municipality of Sabadell has participated in the Triangulum project together with its linked third parties Habitatges Municipals de Sabadell, SA, Informàtica Ajuntament de Sabadell and Promoció Econòmica de Sabadell SL. It has received a European grant of around 400,000 euros.

Sabadell’s main outcome in Triangulum has been the elaboration of the city’s follower city implementation strategy (FCIS):

10 actions, 50% implemented on the 31st January 2020:

Based on a previous DPSIR analysis at the city level -108 indicators and action fields-, ideation and co-design work in 4-helix -3 workshops with the local innovation ecosystem in Sabadell-, and receiving inspiration and training of the “lighthouse” cities -2 visits, 6 workshops, >10 webinars- and all the Horizon 2020 SCC-1 cities
Overall around 500 local stakeholders have been involved during the project

10 actions of the Sabadell Follower City implementation strategy under Triangulum:

ICT and economic development:

Digital horizontal platform for real-time data integration
Videoconference and other city visualisation technologies applied to municipal services
Smart economic development in the fields of smart cities, sport and health
Maker space in connection with the circular economy and digital platform for shared spaces and resources
City beacons as interactive screens at the public space in crowded areas

Energy:

Application of energy efficiency measures in the refurbishment of existing buildings
Innovative applications of public lighting

Mobility:

Renewal of the municipal fleet of vehicles with sustainability criteria
Incentives for the green last-mile delivery of goods
Fostering green mobility to schools

Focus on the main FCIS implemented actions at 31st January 2020:

Cross-cutting real-time IoT data integration complying with the Triangulum ICT reference architecture (“Sentilo” open-source software). “Beta” version available at http://ajsabadell.cat
LYSE’s “Blink” social & health remote care technology tested with 5 users of AVAN, non-profit Association Vallès Friends of Neurology, to be scaled-up to other Sabadell health/social local providers
Virtual reality bike tour through Sabadell with the goal of urban mobility training / participatory urban planning (under study, advanced stage)
Purchase of 67 ecars/evans and 11 ebikes/e-scooters during 2018-2019
Sound sensors at the city centre public space to detect criminality/incivilities, connected with existing surveillance cameras and public lighting, and alerting the Local Police (under study, advanced stage)
MOD3L, 1st prototype of a digital and physical 3D model with Sabadell geodata, elaborated by students of the Technical University of Eindhoven and the Autonomous University of Barcelona
purchase of equipment for a new maker space in Sabadell (high-quality laser cutter, graphic design software, computer), installed at the local School of Carpentry

More information

In 2012 Sabadell pioneered the introduction of a Smart City programme in a structured, comprehensive and systematic approach complementing the implementation of new technologies for urban management. These measures included an increased level of 30% of LED installation in public lighting, of 13% of pneumatic waste collection, a 90% reduction of irrigation of parks and gardens and the implementation of remote management systems of air conditioning in 59 municipal buildings.

The City of Sabadell has also developed a powerful policy of agreements with the triple helix: companies, universities and other public administrations. As a result, Sabadell has received three grants from the European Commission to implement projects under INTERREG, 7th Framework Programme 2007-2013 and Horizon 2020. Furthermore, it has established a partnership of 28 organisations that make technical contributions to the city´s Smart City programme. Thanks to the outstanding participation of Telefonica, Sabadell is becoming the first major “100% fiber” Spanish city after Barcelona and Madrid. In 2013 Sabadell became a finalist in the “Smart City World Awards”, along with Berlin, Copenhagen, Buenos Aires, and Tianjin.

The part of Sabadell participating in Triangulum is currently inhabited by approximately 95,000 citizens. This area includes different urban structures, such as an older and consolidated area in the East, an area which experienced a high population growth during the 70s in the North, and another new city development, which has grown to reach former residential surrounded areas.

Sabadell expects to develop a concrete Smart City implementation plan on integrated Smart City solutions for energy, transport and ICT that identifies integrated actions that generate the highest impacts on energy efficiency, emissions reductions, resources optimisation, economic development and citizenship involvement. The current Sabadell Smart City programme has designed six strategic areas of interest and is working on 34 initiatives so far pursuing this alignment and integration:

Real time information
Decrease in public expenditure in municipal services.
Improve efficiency and quality of public services.
Sabadell as a model for smart management.
Boosting the knowledge economy.
Sustainability: The Smart City model implies innovative management measures to reduce demand of fossil fuels and decreasing CO2 emissions.

These objectives set a baseline for the development of an implementation plan based on:

Sustainable energy development through specific actions on energy demand reduction (retrofitting), jointly with renewable energy sources (RES) implementation in public space and public/private buildings, citizen awareness raising on RES promotion, and nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEB) on approximately 25% of the public infrastructures in the selected deployment area.
Smart grid implementation, which will allow the optimisation of the existing network and the promotion of prosumer entities, leveraging the current infrastructures (e.g. using public lighting infrastructure to charge EV) and promotion of new public services dealing with the collaboration of data sharing of important stakeholders such as utilities.
Employment and creation of new innovative companies, promoting knowledge transfer, fostering innovative actions of existing companies including a training plan to achieve these goals.

The following milestones have been identified: 20% reduction of primary energy consumption; 20% reduction of emissions of Greenhouse Gases (GHG); 20% increase of renewable energy consumption; 66% share of sustainable mobility in daily mobility on a weekday commuting to work; 30% of municipal fleet vehicles with energy efficient technologies and 50% gross rate of separate collection of municipal waste by weight.