In the prize-giving ceremony of the 7th enerTIC Award Scheme, held in the head office of the State Secretariat for Tourism and Digital Progress (Secretaría de Estado de Turismo y para el Avance Digital), a prize was awarded to Lanzarote Island Council’s Art, Culture and Tourism Centers (Centros de Arte, Cultura y Turismo) within the categories of Smart Mobility and Smart Tourism. This award scheme proclaims the best sustainability- and energy-efficiency- improving ICT initiatives.

The President of Lanzarote Island Council (Cabildo de Lanzarote), Maria Dolores Corujo, picked the prize for the best mobility project, CITIES Timanfaya, handed out by GMV’s Industry Sector, Miguel Hormigo. CITIES Timanfaya is a project led by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the Spanish Road Association (Asociación Española de la Carretera); its remit is to design a technology demonstrator vehicle to pave the way for running state-of-the-art, electric, adapted, autonomous and multimedia buses on Lanzarote’s tourist route around the Montañas del Fuego volcanic landscape in the National Park of Timanfaya.

The technology demonstrating vehicle, an electric and autonomous microbus, is scheduled to be up and running during 2020, as a trendsetter for bringing renewable energy sources into tourism-mobility endeavors.

GMV’s task in CITIES Timanfaya is to provide a communication system that tracks the GNSS position at all times while also passing on information from the vehicle’s various subsystems to a control center that will run the whole monitoring system, also supported by GMV’s inhouse solutions. This system will then keep a permanent track of the vehicles’ exact location and state, flagging up any incident and ensuring a rapid response.

Lanzarote has been further hailed under this enerTIC Award Scheme for its project Smart Island, Intelligent Reserve of the Biosphere, in the Smart Tourism category. This initiative consists of a public-private collaboration platform for digital-transformation-based driving of the island’s sustainable development, providing real-time environmental and tourism-service information.

Plataforma enerTIC is made up by 73 firms working for Spain’s energy efficiency by tapping into the development potential of this cutting-edge technology. The platform is supported by its associate companies and public institutions, all working in favor of a more competitive and sustainable economy.