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.