Smart Madrid

Inspiration

Madrid has been the first European capital in launching a package of contactless mobile services of such a large scale. This project is part of a strong will of the Spanish capital to embrace new technologies that truly improve the experience of the city and raise the quality of services dedicated to citizens and visitors. Building on *Connecthings solutions and its numerous European experiences, Madrid is provided with a solution that has been widely used, and can start thinking today of shaping its future mobile services.

How it works

Madrid City Council unveiled the « Smart Madrid » scheme, a bunch of contactless mobile services developed by *Connecthings. In partnership with Madrid’s Municipal Transport Corporation (Empresa Municipal de Transportes, or EMT) 500 bus stops in the city centre have been equipped with the well-known Connecthings “four leaf clover” sticker , allowing today with any Smartphone to access the next buses’ arrivals and multimedia information about the tourist sites nearby via the NFC technology.

Challenges I ran into

The Smart Madrid project is a relevant answer to a major challenge that local authorities from Madrid wanted to address: how to be permanently adapted to the continuously changing Smartphone world? To get direct access from street furniture to useful and relevant information for each user is the key of a success with the general public and of long-lasting uses

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Smart Madrid was the first large-scale deployment of NFC tags in Spain that was praised by all local actors. During the inauguration, Ana Botella, Mayor of Madrid, even said “With Smart Madrid, the Spanish capital takes an important step forward to become a smart city reference”. That was very important to me.

What I learned

How to handle large-scale deployement Work with various local important actores (city officials, transport, touristit office, advertising actors etc.)

What's next for Smart Madrid

Next step is on the way : make the mobile service accessible to persons with visual disabilities, increase the number of stickers to 5.000 in order to reach the whole city network.