For EIT Urban Mobility, living labs are instrumental for testing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating new and innovative mobility solutions. Our Living labs knowledge base platform is a collection of both living lab learning practices and management tools. While the learning practices are initiatives that can function as an inspiration for other living labs, the management tools are a collection of best practices, recommendations on how to set up and operate mobility living labs, how to upscale, allow for citizens’ engagement, and co-create with the end-use and evaluate impacts.

• Barcelona City Council, EIT Urban Mobility, Fira de Barcelona, and DGT have formed an alliance to encourage companies to develop innovative mobility projects in the Catalan capital. 
  
  
• The objective is to promote and boost innovation in smart and sustainable urban mobility, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda.
  
  
• The initiative has been presented to the public through a press conference chaired by Ms. Laia Bonet, deputy major at Barcelona City Council and Mr. Pere Navarro, director of DGT, and attended by Mr. Joan Angulo Arrese, Director Corporate Marketing & Strategic Projects at Fira Barcelona and Mr. Daniel Serra, Ecosystem director at EIT Urban Mobility. 

Urban Lab Mobility Barcelona will be the first Living Labs laboratory in the city of Barcelona. The initiative aims to promote and facilitate the implementation of pilot tests and innovative projects in intelligent and sustainable urban mobility to diversify the city’s economy and consolidate Barcelona as the capital of innovation in mobility in Southern Europe. Through this alliance between administrations and entities, the aim is to contribute to scaling up and giving international projection to these types of innovation projects in mobility by incorporating their presentation at the leading international fairs in the market.

Public space as a test bed
One of the main problems companies encounter when developing innovative economic activities is the lack of regulation. A fact that limits their capacity to create new technologies and services. To avoid missing out on this type of opportunity, Urban Lab Barcelona will offer several geographical areas to companies as test spaces within the city, with the aim of testing pilot projects in natural environments before they are commercialised. The test spaces will be determined according to the characteristics of each project.

Advisory services and access to data
Also aimed at the organisations involved in this initiative, dynamic and personalised advisory and technical support services will be offered by experts who will provide legal, technical and operational guidance and data and information collection thanks to Barcelona City Council’s network and sensor infrastructure. Participating companies can access real-time traffic information, municipal databases, etc.

Big Data Office
A Big Data office will be created to manage all the data collected during the pilot tests.

An initiative within the framework of the future Barcelona Urban Innovation Lab
This alliance to test the mobility of the future in Barcelona is part of the strategy to consolidate Barcelona as the innovation capital of Southern Europe, defined through the public-private platform of the Barcelona Innovation Coast (BIC). The project will also be one of the first initiatives of the Barcelona Urban Innovation Lab, managed by the municipal foundation BIT Habitat. The service will be operational throughout 2022.

EIT Urban Mobility’s knowledge of the living labs approach, leveraging the expertise of the front-runner cities and organisations that are members of our community, our experience in managing innovation projects integrating research and innovation processes in real-life communities, and our community covers the quadruple-helix of innovation, are the main contributions of our entity to the initiative. 

Co-Funded by EIT Urban Mobility and led by CARNET, the LogiSmile project aims to respond to the major challenge of last-mile urban distribution in increasingly congested cities. 

The metropolitan area of Barcelona and Esplugues de Llobregat hosted a test in a real urban environment of the autonomous goods distribution robot Ona last Friday, 10 June. Developed by CARNET and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, BarcelonaTech (UPC), in the framework of the European project LogiSmile, the test was carried out in the Can Vidalet neighbourhood. Later, the Ona robot will travel to Hamburg (Germany) and Debrecen (Hungary).

The event was attended by the Minister for Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez; the Mayoress of Esplugues de Llobregat, Pilar Díaz; the rector of the UPC, Daniel Crespo; the executive and scientific head of CARNET, Laia Pagès; and the director of EIT Urban Mobility Innovation Hub South Daniel Serra, as well as different partners of the project.

For the Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez, “this is not science fiction today; it is what we will experience in our cities in the coming years.” The minister highlighted the importance for Esplugues of hosting this pilot project, the result of collaboration between public administrations, universities and companies, and a fundamental axis for achieving safe, digitalised mobility that respects the planet and people’s health. The autonomous vehicle is included in the objective of digitalisation and decarbonisation pursued by the Ministry. This process entails challenges already contemplated in the Sustainable Mobility Law, which will soon reach the Spanish congress.

“The future is here”, said the mayoress of Esplugues de Llobregat, Pilar Díaz, who highlighted that Ona “is an example of putting technology at the service of problem-solving, in this case for the distribution of last-mile goods”, while highlighting the “ecological and sustainable” aspect of the initiative.

This pilot demonstrates that future mobility in our cities is already a reality. The commitment of the Spanish government, the town of Esplugues de Llobregat and the Metropolitan area of Barcelona also proves that when the right actors work together, we can design the future of our cities. 

As facilitators of the project and founders of the largest European community transforming mobility, we are excited and honoured to see how the future is happening now. With our headquarters in Barcelona, EIT Urban Mobility emerges as the instrument of the European Union that enables the collaboration between the agents necessary to carry out this type of initiatives. In our common challenge for the decarbonisation of cities, the collaboration between public and private agents, companies, research centres and universities is essential for making the future a reality.

LogiSmile is a project led by CARNET and co-funded by EIT Urban Mobility. It is developed in collaboration with Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona (AMB), Capgemini Engineering, DKV Debrecen Exclusive Transport Company Ltd. , Ajuntament d’Esplugues de Llobregat, ITS Hamburg 2021 GmbH, LMAD, NFF – Niedersächsisches Forschungszentrum Fahrzeugtechnik, OtoStolik, PTV Group, Dirección General de Tráfico, IRI – Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial, CSIC-UPC, and CDEI-UPC.

Last June 2021, EIT Urban Mobility Hub South was selected by the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation as one of the co-leading entities of the mobility group in Spain of the Gaia X project. More than 300 companies and public entities have submitted their manifestation of interest.

Being selected as co-leaders members of this working group allows the Innovation Hub South to participate actively in the initiative and offers us a unique opportunity to strengthen our technological commitment and the leadership of our community. The association is doing pioneering work in data infrastructure and digital ecosystems, and it will have an immense impact on Europe’s economic future.

About Gaia- X
Gaia-X is the next generation of digital data infrastructure: a trustworthy data ecosystem across Europe and beyond based on the European values of openness, transparency, and sovereignty. The international community of Gaia-X Hubs supports this unique pan-European idea on national levels to nurture a dynamic, grassroots ecosystem.

The Spanish Hub
The objective of the Hubs is to facilitate and support the creation of European Data Spaces. Hubs focus on developing these relevant spaces to the local region and interact with other areas to build cross-national data nets. The Spanish Gaia-X association aims to generate a stable and permanent collaboration framework to promote secure, transparent and practical data sharing and exploitation in Spain.

These initiatives are part of the Digital Spain 2025 agenda, which aims to promote the country’s digital transformation as a lever to relaunch economic growth, reduce inequality, increase productivity, and take advantage of the opportunities offered by new technologies.