Smart City Cluster has successfully secured official approval for 18 projects, valued at nearly 5 million euros, within the latest innovation aid call from the Ministry of Industry and Tourism. Both the number of initiatives and the funding amount place the Spanish smart cities cluster in a privileged position among the 111 Innovative Business Associations (AEI) officially registered.

Seven of these 18 projects will be carried out in collaboration with other clusters from various sectors, involving a total of 55 SMEs. The initiatives cover a wide range of applications, from urban mobility solutions and energy management to advancements in smart infrastructure and information technologies, thereby aiming to enhance the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises and meet the emerging market needs.

Daniel González-Bootello, General Director of Smart City Cluster, highlighted the significant impact of the AEI aid program on the development of Spanish SMEs: “The execution level of the aids exceeds 90%, with projects amounting to nearly 100 million euros presented, and this innovation is translating into concrete responses to citizens’ needs.” He urged the central government to continue supporting this budget item, comparing its importance to the Eiffel Tower’s historical significance for Paris beyond the 1889 World Exposition.

All projects, one by one:

BIM4PV: A virtual platform enabling collaborative design and operation of photovoltaic systems based on a digital twin.

CENIT II: Development of an integrated planning and operation system for energy communities.

SIAPEMAD: An intelligent system for caring for the elderly and dependents, transforming houses into digital homes.

Smart Citizen Platform: An omnichannel platform for delivering electronic public services to citizens, both tele-assisted and self-service.

EmPOWER: A virtual manager for SMEs offering control over energy contracting, consumption data, and connection with innovative energy efficiency services to reduce electricity bills.

Flexener 3: A digital energy management platform that optimally and securely adjusts a building’s demand to market conditions in real-time.

GEDIAV 2: Development of a predictive digital twin for wastewater treatment plants.

IA System for Automatic Management of Green Areas: An integrated system for the smart monitoring and control of green spaces, enhancing sustainability, efficiency, and productivity in both agricultural and urban settings.

Smart Saf 2: An app capable of predicting in real-time the appearance of persistent contrails from aircraft under certain weather conditions.

DEGRASCPI-LCA: A digital twin platform for calculating the carbon footprint throughout an asset’s lifecycle.

Agrotwin 2.0: A digital twin of an intensive Mediterranean agricultural operation, ensuring training and upskilling for professionals and technologists in the sector.

And the seven projects in collaboration with other clusters:

Mission Alpha: Design, manufacture, and launch the CubeSat “Alpha3” satellite to expand knowledge on technology for measuring interplanetary magnetic fields.

eMAPA 4.0 (Phase II): An advanced pentesting automation platform offering specialized cybersecurity services to highly digitized manufacturing sector SMEs.

Neosip: Research on SIP (System-in-Package Heterogeneous) architectures and technologies and their feasibility studies applied to health, IoT, and automotive industries.

Leading: A procedure with objective data to guide the next steps for infrastructure in energy communities towards the most sustainable and investment-returning path.

GEDEFEC3: Development of a digital twin proposal for a specific type of agricultural operation: nut crops with shells.

Metarail: A control center in a collaborative virtual environment (metaverse and artificial intelligence) for efficient railway infrastructure maintenance management.

Pieres: A technological tool enabling the automatic identification of areas and zones for socio-economic territorial development based on renewable energy sources in Spain.

These projects are funded by the Ministry of Industry and Tourism within the AEI support program to enhance the competitiveness of the Spanish industry, with the support of the European Union through the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan.