International. "The impact of Facility Management on Smart Cities" is the title of the conference given by the Spanish Association of Facility Management and the College of Architects of Barcelona, which addressed the importance of the use of technological advances linked to smart cities and their contribution to the management and maintenance of all types of equipment, municipal and active services in urban centres.
The conference of IFMA, the Spanish Association of Facility Management, addressed the challenges of applying smart city technologies to improve the lives of citizens and their contribution to the design of sustainable cities.
The association considers that the challenge of its sector is the implementation of these applications for the intelligent management of assets, which incorporate big data, artificial intelligence, GIS, smart mobility, etc., "which have been at our disposal for time", they explain, and with which the quality of life of people can be improved.
During the conference, different projects were shown in which Barcelona has been working to become a smart city and how they are projecting a new city model to achieve synergies and take advantage of all opportunities.
Another of the great topics presented at the IFMA conference was climate change, since buildings are responsible for more than 35% of CO2 emissions and 40% of energy consumption in Europe. "Economic demands, social demands, environmental commitments or technological advances require us to rethink the design and management of cities," explains the association, which points out the need to install electric vehicle charging points in order to begin to serve this new concept of cars.
But there will be no transformation of cities without a prior design of them and an urban renewal. In this sense, they emphasize that "facility managers and architects have the capacity to collaborate in the creation of more sustainable, more cohesive cities that facilitate the sociability of collective spaces, reduce territorial social inequalities and manage to offer citizens all the products and services they may need at any time".
To its work, technology is added, which is fundamental to interconnect the different systems that make up the city and directly affect the definition of economically and environmentally sustainable cities. The association wants, with this type of meetings, to promote "cities based on the technology-health binomial and turn these into inclusive, friendly and empathetic spaces with people".
