FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Barcelona Pilot Unifies Mobility, Energy, and Waste Data in Single Smart-City Platform
First-of-its-kind EU-funded project cuts congestion 18 %, lowers CO₂ 12 %, and raises recycling 30 % within six months.
Barcelona, Spain – 22 November 2025
Barcelona this week opened the live environment of “URBAN-ONE,” a €38 million smart-city pilot that fuses previously siloed streams of traffic, electricity, and solid-waste data into one AI-ready analytics layer. Early results from the 4.2 km² testbed show average rush-hour travel times down 18 %, grid-related CO₂ emissions down 12 %, and household recycling rates up 30 % compared with the same quarter in 2024, according to independent auditors at the Catalan Energy Institute.
The three-year project, co-financed by the EU’s Digital Europe Programme and a consortium of eight technology vendors, is the first to combine high-resolution data from 1,200 curb-side sensors, 400 EV charging points, 90 waste bins, and the city’s existing 2,100 traffic cameras inside a single governance framework governed by the new ISO 37123 standard for resilient cities. By continuously predicting traffic surges, energy loads, and bin fill-levels, the platform triggers automated decisions—such as re-timing traffic signals, pre-cooling public buildings with surplus solar power, or dispatching garbage trucks only to bins forecast to be 85 % full. A recent field study in ScienceDirect found that comparable integration in Shenzhen cut annual transport emissions by 1.2 million tonnes, underscoring the scalability of cross-domain data fusion when privacy safeguards are embedded from the outset .
“Cities have talked about breaking silos for a decade; URBAN-ONE proves it can be done in months, not years,” said Dr. Lucía Romero, Chief Executive of the public-private operating company Barcelona Digital City. “Our open algorithms now treat a traffic jam, a voltage spike, and an overflowing container as symptoms of the same urban metabolism. The 30 % jump in recycling alone saves the city an estimated €1.3 million annually in landfill fees—money we can reinvest in social housing.”
Market data released last month by IDC project the European smart-city platform market to grow 22 % annually through 2028, reaching €9.4 billion as regulators tighten climate-disclosure rules for municipalities. Juniper Research ranks Barcelona—already the 2024 EU Capital of Innovation—second only to Singapore in its readiness index, citing the city’s enforceable open-data ordinance and 97 % 5G outdoor coverage.
The pilot’s governance model requires any company accessing the data lake to sign a “responsible-use charter” that bans individual profiling, mandates 30-day deletion for personally identifiable travel records, and obliges vendors to release derivative algorithms under a Creative Commons license. The Spanish Data Protection Agency audits compliance quarterly; zero breaches have been recorded since launch.
Construction on the next phase begins in March 2026, expanding the testbed to 12 km² and adding real-time air-quality sensors plus dynamic curb-space allocation for delivery drones. If results hold, the city council will embed the platform in its 2030 Urban Mobility Plan, with procurement funded through green bonds certified under the EU Taxonomy.
About Barcelona Digital City
Barcelona Digital City is the municipal-owned company charged with deploying smart technologies that advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Since 2022 it has delivered 42 digital services, reduced municipal energy use 19 %, and engaged 180,000 residents through its Decidim open-democracy platform.
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