Objectives and justification

The objective of the Chair of Intelligent and Sustainable Territories (proposed by the Valencia Provincial Council and the Universitat de València) is to encourage the development and implementation of technological, innovative and sustainable solutions shared between all municipalities of Valencia; to make the dissemination of successful cases between town or city councils easier; and to offer a highly qualified support for the questions and doubts that the experts of the different councils may have from an independent perspective.

The expansion of the new technologies and the concept of smartcities has gone beyond big cities and, more and more, small and medium towns and cities are looking forward to the implementation of innovative and sustainable solutions that help them improve their welfare. Despite this, they usually find difficulty in the obtaining of necessary knowledge and/or enough budget in order to face these projects individually.

The Valencia Provincial Council plays a fundamental role in binding actions together and proposing them for the different towns and cities to use. But, the increasing demand of sustainable solutions makes the technical resources available from the Provincial Council insufficient or inadequate in order to cover the expansion produced in recent years. The Universitat de València, through the University Research Institute on Robotics and Information and Communication Technologies (IRTIC), has been collaborating for years as a specialized assistant to the Provincial Council in a very satisfactory way and with the objective of improving the development and the structuring of the territory through the implementation of technological and sustainable solutions for the towns and cities of the province.

The cordial relationship existing between both institutions, the technical capacity of the IRTIC and the excellent work done by the specialists of both institutions, with the growing demand of independent experts who assist the small and medium city and town councils with the best solutions, all of this, has been the reason of the creation of the Chair of Intelligent and Sustainable Territories by the Universitat de València and the Valencia Provincial Council. It was done in order to strengthen and look for solutions to the problems of the town and city councils, disseminate solutions and provide assistance to the council by helping their specialists and to the towns and cities by allowing them to have a common place where they can support each other. Moreover, the fact that the IRTIC is in the main national and international forums about smartcities and intelligent territories will allow them to get to know the last tendencies in order to better develop the territory in the province.

• To define a strategic plan for dissemination of applications, tools and technological services that the Valencia Provincial Council disposes to the town and city councils of the province.
• To perform training activities about the available tools in the council and the application of new technologies in the management of towns and cities aimed to the personnel of the provincial council.
• To study the technological needs of the local entities of the province. To define the course of action.
• To identify the indicators of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) inside the territory of Valencia in order to define the available sources and the mechanisms for data recompilation and evaluate the progress of creating sustainable cities and territories.
• To collaborate in the development of tools and computer applications that optimize the management of the SCI (Industrial Control Service), which can improve the catalogue of ICT services offered by the local entities and which can provide new technological solutions to the councils or increase the value of the SDGs indicators.
• To analyse intern data, both of the provincial councils and of the towns and cities of the provinces, in order to improve the information available to make the strategic decision-making easier.
• To analyse and optimize the website of open data of the Provincial Council in order to make the stored information available and encourage its use.
• To develop control charts for all towns and cities of the province, in order to allow them to get to know the evolution of the SDGs with the information from the devices deployed, from the Provincial Council or from external sources.
• To transfer knowledge to the administrative and service staff of the towns and cities in order to let them achieve the maximum performance out of the smart tools that are provided through the SCI.
• To perform a comparative analysis between towns and cities, creating comparative control charts that will make the identification of the towns and cities easier. With better indicators and by performing encouraging and dissemination campaigns of this good practices.
• To cooperate in the surveillance of the European subsidies and to encourage local entities to participate in innovative solutions. To make the dissemination of the information and the participation easier, both for the town and city councils and for the Provincial Council.
• To encourage collaboration with other administrations and provincial councils by publishing the activities done by each of them and exchange good practices.
• To aid in the maintenance of security, quality and integrity of the data from the SCI platform. And also to define and adapt the ontology of the data.
• To identify data patterns and to detect anomalies.
• To develop learning-based models that provide utility to both local entities and their inhabitants. To predict, sort and combine using data from different spots in Connecta Valencia.
• To organize contests or to award work made by degree or master’s degree students related to the use of open data in the provincial council or to the implementation of new technologies in the towns and cities of Valencia.
• To encourage and fund curricular and extracurricular internships by students from the Universitat de València performing work related to the Chair.
• To sign predoctoral and postdoctoral contracts in order to perform activities related to the Chair.
• And any other activity that the Monitoring Commission of the Chair finds interesting, is within the economic possibilities of the Chair and is related to it.