On 17 February Valladolid hosted the presentation of the launch of the European REMOURBAN project (REgeneration MOdel for accelerting the Smart URBAN transformation).
The REMOURBAN project, funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, aims to develop and validate an integral and sustainable urban regeneration model, tackling the implementation within the involved cities of groundbreaking ICT, mobility and energy technologies to speed up the transformation of European cities into smart urban areas, driving social progress, environmental regeneration and acting as a pole and powerhouse of economic growth.
REMOURBAN is being led by the CARTIF Research Center and is being driven by a wide-ranging international consortium of 22 partners. In Spain the City Council (Ayuntamiento) of Valladolid and the companies Acciona, Iberdrola, Xeridia, GMV and Veolia will be responsible for setting up and carrying out various activities in the city of Valladolid, designed to improve energy efficiency and smart mobility.
GMV’s REMOURBAN activities center on leading the set of smart mobility measures in the city of Valladolid. GMV will be in charge of monitoring the various fleets of electrical vehicles involved in the project, including buses, taxis, delivery vehicles, hire vehicles (car-sharing), plus those for private use. GMV will also be responsible for implementing a mobility-aid App allowing users to enjoy their mobility experience within the city.
REMOURBAN is one of the three European Commission-funded lighthouse projects in the first call for proposals for Smart Cities and Communities under Horizon 2020. It is also the first integral project (understanding this to be a project including several activity sectors) run on a basis of public-private collaboration within the Valladolid-Palencia Smart City initiative, which GMV joined in 2010. This initiative involves the collaboration and identification of opportunities for presenting joint projects centering on such aspects as energy efficiency, support for implementation of smart and sustainable mobility and improvement of citizen attention procedures on the strength of new technologies, all areas bearing a close relationship to GMV’s business activity.
The five-year REMOURBAN project has a total budget of €23.8 million, 21.5 of which will be provided by the EU. The three lighthouse cities will be Valladolid (Spain), Nottingham (UK) and Tepebasi (Turkey), acting as advanced cities implementing a set of measures in the three abovementioned sectors, while Seraing (Belgium) and Miskolc (Hungary) will be acting as follower cities, assuring model replicability at European level. The initial outlay in Spain will be funded by the European Union, the City Council of Valladolid and the participating firms.
The presentation ceremony was attended by the mayor of Valladolid, Francisco Javier León de la Riva, as the leading city of the project, together with his opposite number from the Turkey city of Tepebasi, Ahmet Atac, and the Business Growth Development Specialist of Nottingham City Council (UK), Alyson Stacey.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement No. 646511
