Orchestra Cities demo sparked interest at the Smart City Expo

Orchestra Cities met many new friends at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, from 19 to 21 November. Dr Federico Facca, Chief Technical Officer, Dr Giovanni Rimassa, Chief Innovation Officer, and Dr Monique Calisti, Chief Executive Officer, were present at Martel’s booth to interact with visitors to discuss and explain Orchestra Cities’ vision. Also of interest were the  use cases, customer success stories and, most importantly, to let people experience the sensor-to-city span covered by the platform.

Live data demo

Real, live data from the Zürich metropolitan area was shown as part of the running project with the Swiss utility EKZ. Moreover, the public’s darling at the IoT Week in Aarhus, the Orchestra Cities Lego model, was back. As a FIWARE Gold Member, Martel’s presence was situated within the combined space for FIWARE, and beyond its own Lego model, Martel was able to contribute to a second smart parking scenario. This was part of the FIWARE World Lego City, to be installed in the shared FIWARE Lego demonstrator, thus showcasing Orchestra Cities’ multi-tenancy in the brick world, as in the real one.

Dr Monique Calisti gave a presentation about Orchestra Cities hosted by the Open and Agile Smart Cities, OASC, initiative that is growing rapidly and connecting more than 140 cities from 27 different countries worldwide.

“Our open source and open data IoT platform can help accelerate the development and uptake of smart city services across a variety of scenarios, from air quality monitoring, to waste management or electronic vehicle charging and parking“. says Dr Calisti, listing just some of the main application scenarios Martel has been working on recently with customers in Germany and in Switzerland.

Of interest to many

The event attendance was large and varied. City representatives were interested in Orchestra Cities’ capabilities and customer stories, whereas academic researchers or students of different ages focused on the innovation potential of smart city platforms and concrete ideas for their study and research. For some, technical details of how both the platform and the Lego model work took center stage. For others, the political and management challenges, and the social good brought about by an effective solution such as Orchestra Cities, became food for thought and the main takeaway.

Among the many interesting and fruitful encounters at the Orchestra Cities exhibition booth, was the visit of Beat Kaser, the Swiss Consul in Barcelona, accompanied by representatives of the Swiss Embassy in Spain. The Swiss Consul was very happy to play with our Lego demonstrator, and thanks to the Swiss Business Hub, Spain, will support Martel in exploring potential Smart City projects in Spain!

Coming up next with Orchestra Cities:

Swisscom IoT Day 2020, Zurich, Switzerland, 23 January, 2020