Ineco is recognised as a leading engineering firm in the transport sector with highly specialised and highly valued human resources, and in recent years, it has developed a set of innovative initiatives in the IT area, including new digital services for its customers (smart cities, IoT, artificial intelligence, blockchain, virtual/augmented reality, etc.). This process is now to be given a decisive boost with the launch of its Digital Transformation Plan 2018-2020, an initiative that will be applied not only to services provided to customers, but also to the company’s own operations.

Digital transformation makes it possible to unify Ineco’s vision and enable it to move forward, with everyone interconnected, moving in the same direction, making use of the company’s intangible assets and taking advantage of digital tools. In this new stage, information no longer belongs to a single area and becomes part of the entire company.

Technological convergence

Today, the modernisation of companies in the field of transport and government is inextricably linked to the intensive use of new technologies. Technologies such as cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence are fundamental elements for addressing the current challenges. They also have a mutual multiplier effect, making it possible, for example, to have big data and artificial intelligence cloud computing applications, which would not be possible otherwise.

The use of cloud services in transport management systems, gives companies the potential for lower costs, greater agility and flexibility, improved response to unpredictable events and changes in customer behaviour, reduced risk levels, availability of globally accessible services and easier and faster implementation.

The use of artificial intelligence and big data in the transport sector makes it possible to identify trends, verify phenomena and predict behaviours. With these tools, decision-making will be easier, faster and, above all, more efficient, meaning that this data becomes an element of great value. In fact, this kind of analysis is already underway and is being used by public authorities in areas that affect passenger transport in cities and on the roads. For example, sensors that count the number of vehicles passing a certain point are already being installed on traffic lights to optimise changing times and improve flow.

This enormous amount of data for analysis provides numerous advantages such as enabling better planning and management, reducing environmental impact and optimising the performance of vehicles and drivers. Artificial intelligence is also used in most areas of the transport sector, especially in autonomous driving. In this field, which has been widely developed in the aviation sector, autonomous road vehicles and smart drones are now making their presence felt.

New generations of technologies and mobile devices help improve efficiency and reduce the costs of passenger transport companies, while users can enjoy faster, safer and more reliable journeys that they can plan, manage and easily pay for from their phones. And both agents and users benefit from the potential of analysing the large volumes of real-time data generated as a result of these transactions.

In the case of employees, the use of mobile technologies enables business processes to be transformed and carried out from any location. Employees will have access to all of the information and tools they need to perform their work on the mobile device of their choice, thereby improving productivity and customer relationships.

The Internet of things (IoT), the basis of an environment in which people and objects are interconnected, has the potential to radically transform the transport sector, creating new services with high levels of intelligence. This is the case with air transport and the optimisation of routes with the consequent reduction in travelling times and increased safety; simplification of procedures; and availability to passengers of self-service and seamless processes, both at airports and on the aircraft themselves.

Another major field of application for the IoT is vehicles and driving. Taking cars as an example, the current starting point is the connected car, in which both the driver and car have a high degree of connectivity with the outside and services necessary for journeys are available. The growing adoption of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technologies, together with the development of smart cities and smart roads, will positively influence driving, thanks to direct communication between cars and interaction with traffic lights, signs and even the mobile devices of pedestrians.

This will result is transport systems in which all elements of the environment can communicate and cooperate to create safer and more efficient driving within the framework of smart mobility. The next step is the autonomous car and the concept of car as a service (CaaS): no longer is it necessary to buy a car to travel from one place to another, it can be available as a service only when needed. In this environment, interaction with customers through social media and the collaborative economy provide many advantages, among them, brand loyalty and positioning.

Agile methodologies enable working methods to adapt to the circumstances of a project at any time. The two most widely used today by developers are Scrum and Kanban, the first of which is characterised by its incremental development strategy, with projects coded in increments through iterations called sprints. Conversely, Kanban is a more visual methodology, where tasks, defined according to established rules, progress through different phases (to do, in progress, done, etc.).

In the current IT environment, the term DevOps is one of the most frequently mentioned. Its concept can be defined as a software-creation methodology based on integration between software developers and system administrators. DevOps makes it possible to manufacture software more quickly, with higher quality, lower cost and very frequent releases. Another advantage is the automation of basic hardware and software management through a specialised kind of scripting language, reducing administration costs and generating more homogeneous and efficient systems. DevOps is not a culture in itself, but it does require major cultural and organisational change. A cultural change towards collaboration, communication and, ultimately, complete integration between the old (usually stagnant) development and systems areas.

New approaches to new architectures based on microservices and software containers also generate benefits. Unlike the traditional approach in which everything is created in a single piece, microservices are separate and work together to carry out the same tasks. Each of these components, or processes, are microservices whose ultimate goal is to deliver high-quality software faster.

As for software containers, these are packages of elements that allow a particular application to run in isolation from the operating system that supports it. If software is developed and needs to be moved from a server installed in a data centre to a virtual machine running on a public cloud, the code may not work well in its new environment. However, if this software is inside a container, it can be transferred to the system that best suits it.

Blockchain is a technological paradigm whose application is being explored by all sectors due to its ability to radically change current business models. Blockchain is precisely the technology that enables the functioning of Bitcoin, the world’s main cryptocurrency and clear blockchain success story, but it is a paradigm that can be used in other very different areas.

Blockchain technology allows collaboration, guaranteeing the security of transactions with a high level of transparency. A blockchain network is a collection of computers, called nodes, connected to each other using a common protocol for the purpose of validating and storing the same information in a P2P (peer-to-peer) network. This information is interpreted as a common ledger, hence the acronym DLT (distributed ledger technology) associated with this type of architecture. The ledger records all transactions between nodes that have occurred since the creation of the aforementioned blockchain network. It provides an incorruptible technology whose processes are secure, error and intermediary-free and fast.

The use of virtual/augmented reality in transport is becoming increasingly significant. Among the main advantages is the creation of immersive virtual environments that allow you to move freely through interactive simulations; physical teleworking, through the use of haptic devices and automated systems; the commercialisation of products and services without the need to have a physical environment for sales; and its great utility for supporting education and training.

5G networks, the new paradigm

5G technology addresses the next (fifth) generation of data transmission for mobile networks, constituting not only a new wireless communications paradigm, but also an essential technological component in digital transformation in the most advanced countries over the next decade.

The main solutions that are driving this digital transformation, the Internet of Things and Big Data, robotics, virtual reality and ultra high definition, will be supported by 5G technology. For its introduction to be successful, it is necessary not only for infrastructures and telecommunications networks to evolve, but also for an entire ecosystem of platforms, services and 5G content to be developed.

5G is expected to reach technological and commercial maturity in the 2020 time horizon with a large increase of traffic on mobile networks, and massively expanding the number of interconnected devices (the number of interconnected devices is expected to increase from 15 billion in 2015 to more than 75 billion in 2025). New technology will play a fundamental role when supporting the vast amount of data that is expected to be handled on the network. It will also significantly reduce file download times. In specific terms, 5G networks will provide very fast, high-capacity mobile broadband with speeds in excess of 100 Mbit/s with peaks of 1 Gbit/s, which will enable, for example, ultra high definition content or virtual reality experiences to be offered. It will provide ultra reliable communications, with low latency of around 1 millisecond (ms) compared to 20/30 ms typical of 4G networks. This could make them appropriate for applications that have specific requirements in this area, such as connected or autonomous vehicles, telemedicine services, real-time security and control systems and others, such as smart manufacturing. They will also make mass machine-to-machine (M2M) communications possible. The capacity to manage a large number of simultaneous connections will be increased, which will allow, among other things, the mass deployment of sensors, the Internet of things (IoT) and the growth of big data services.

Any user connected to the Internet through any device is a potential target for a cyberattack, hence the vital importance of cybersecurity, a discipline in constant evolution which focuses on offering the best protection to systems in the face of a changing landscape of threats in which attackers have been professionalising in recent years and now boast significant infrastructures and organisations that can jeopardise the security of almost any institution or company.

Plan objectives

Digital transformation is an extremely powerful lever of change and innovation for companies. It is not, however, an ultimate objective in and of itself; it needs to be a catalyst that enables the achievement of the goals derived from the aspects analysed above:

1. Total digitisation of processes: ensuring that all of the organisation’s processes are managed digitally, thereby improving efficiency, sustainability and relations with customers.
2. Improved competitiveness based on the intelligent management of data: transforming the analysis and exploitation of the company’s data to improve decision-making and make management smarter.
3. Strengthened collaboration and communication between areas of the organisation: promoting as much as possible collaboration and teamwork among Ineco’s staff to take advantage of all knowledge that exists in the company.
4. Comprehensive digital commercial management: comprehensive management of customer relations, from the generation of opportunities to the execution and closure of projects, involving all Ineco staff who participate in every phase of identifying new business opportunities. Creation of new digital channels for developing relations with customers (e.g. social selling).
5. Permeability of technology at all levels: taking advantage of new technologies to continue contributing value to current products and services, as well as enabling the generation of new solutions to support the growth of the future business.
6. Facilitation of digital transformation: piloting new ideas to generate a disruptive transformation.

Lines of action

Finally, to achieve the established objectives, work needs to be carried out on various lines of action, which, in this plan, have been classified into six different areas:

• Digital transformation lab. This is a laboratory for testing all kinds of digital transformation ideas, especially those that are disruptive, applying the fail fast paradigm of ‘fail fast’. In other words, quickly discarding any initiatives that are considered to have failed and scaling up those that work. It is also about internally disseminating innovative technologies that have the potential to transform the organisation: Big data, artificial intelligence, RPA, etc.
• Fast execution. This area includes actions and initiatives that aim to improve the execution speed of the company’s processes and productivity of employees, with the resultant increase in efficiency at all levels. Actions in this category can be considered from two perspectives: the user and systems. From the perspective of the user, actions aimed at improving application usability and user experience are incorporated, resulting in improved agility and greater speed in the adoption of new tools thanks to a reduced learning curve. From the perspective of systems, improvements are sought in the ‘raw’ speed of applications and agility in their development and modification thanks to changes in system architecture, less customisation/use of out-of-the-box solutions, reduced number of tools through the merging of functionalities and the ‘mobilisation’ of processes in smartphones.
• Cybersecurity. Cybersecurity initiatives are aimed at safeguarding the security of information and systems. The actions included here involve considering the implementation of guidelines, actions, training, best practices and technologies that can be used to protect the assets of the organisation and users within the computing environment in which they work. The approach focuses on system users at all times, seeking to ensure levels of cybersecurity with the least possible intrusiveness in the daily work of people and understanding that an excellent level of digital security can be achieved through the use of the latest technologies (AI, passive monitoring, etc.) without harming productivity.
• Paperless. The ultimate goal of the initiatives in this area is to totally eliminate paper from the organisation’s processes in order to gain major benefits such as improving efficiency, increasing sustainability, facilitating network working and analysing and optimising processes.
• Data-driven company. Data-driven companies are organisations that are characterised by taking advantage of and exploiting data generated by their daily activities, with the ultimate goal of improving their value proposition, processes and decision-making. To achieve this, the data must be properly incorporated in a digital format, transversally available, ‘unique’ and high quality. The initiatives are therefore aimed at identifying non-digitised data with value for the organisation, including it in tools and solutions from which it is easily accessible, creating new data channels and exploiting all of the available information in an advanced manner through BI/business discovery, AI or similar techniques.
• Co-creation/collaboration. This line includes actions focused on promoting agility, collaboration and co-creation options among the different areas of the company. The underlying objective is to maximise the productivity and utilisation of the knowledge of all employees, taking advantage of multidisciplinary capabilities and promoting teamwork, regardless of the geographical or organisational location of each employee.

Last November, Minister of Public Works, Íñigo de la Serna, presented the Transport and Infrastructure Innovation Plan 2017-2020, whose aim is to integrate and coordinate all of the innovation activities of the companies and institutions involved in the Public Works Group. With a planned investment of 50 million euros over a period of three years, the Plan starts in February 2018 with the launch of cross-cutting initiatives and projects throughout the Group so that ‘it will function as a collaborative group working within a network’, explained the minister.

Through the Plan, the Public Works Group is taking a major step forward in line with the European Commission’s H2020 programme, a financial instrument that seeks to ensure competitiveness through research and innovation. At the national level, the Plan is part of the government’s strategy on innovation, in which the Digital Agenda for Spain and the Spanish Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation play particularly significant roles.

Thanks to the National Smart Cities Plan developed by the State Secretary for the Information Society and Digital Agenda (SESIAD) in collaboration with Ineco, Spain is a pioneer in the development of smart cities, having established a number of guidelines on platform interoperability that have become an international benchmark. The platform ecosystem proposed in the Innovation Plan follows these guidelines, ensuring that the different transport initiatives complement and can be integrated into the advances made in smart cities. The result is a common strategy based on a solid model.

The Transport and Infrastructure Innovation Plan also uses BIM (Building Information Modelling) as a cross-cutting element for all of the initiatives, given the strategic role that it needs to play in the future of Spanish innovation (see report).

A cutting-edge transport system

Transport plays a key role in the overall development of societies and their economies. The way in which people and goods move through an area largely defines its social, economic and environmental fabric, which is why actions in transport and infrastructure are a vital part of any basic strategy in the ongoing process of expansion and modernisation of societies.

For this reason, the Plan is committed to putting technology at the service of the citizen, using innovation to make advances in safety, accessibility and sustainability. These advances need to be accompanied by greater economic and social profitability through an increase in the efficiency and effectiveness of public and private investment.

The Innovation Plan is structured around four main dimensions to achieve these objectives: digitisation, Internet of the future, intermodality and energy transformation. Supported by these dimensions, the initiatives proposed in the Plan represent a great boost to the consolidation of a safer, more sustainable and accessible cutting-edge transport system, which will keep Spain at the forefront of innovation in transport.

The aim of the plan is to put technology at the service of the citizen, using innovation to make progress in safety, accessibility and sustainability, advances that need to be accompanied by greater economic and social profitability through an increase in effectiveness and efficiency in public and private investment

Four major cornerstones and 70 initiatives underway

Drafted by Ineco, the Innovation Plan included participation by the heads of Adif, Aena, ENAIRE, CRIDA, Spanish Port System and Renfe. The opinions of other institutions, such as the Spanish Rail Research Laboratory (CEDEX), Spanish Maritime Safety and Rescue Agency (SASEMAR), the Ministry of Public Works and various private entities, were also taken into account. Four strategic cornerstones have been identified in the Plan: user experience; smart platforms; smart routes; and energy efficiency and sustainability. These cornerstones are structured in turn into 22 strategic lines, which have materialised into 70 initiatives.

User Experience is aimed at personalising the offering according to user preferences, providing them with products and services on demand. To that end, the concept of ‘Mobility as a Service’ and, in general, public-private collaboration models will be promoted. Several other initiatives will focus on the elimination of barriers, with the development and implementation of new booking, payment and validation systems focused on cybersecurity and fraud reduction.

Big Data will be the technological foundation that will enable personalisation of services and improved user experience.

The second cornerstone, Smart Platforms, is designed as a cross-cutting element that provides technological support to all of the initiatives in the Innovation Plan. Through these Platforms, information is collected and processed by the companies in the Public Works Group, improving efficiency, quality and security of the services offered.

The proposed platform ecosystem covers all modes of transport and is integrated with city platforms. The application of the BIM methodology in stations, airports and ports, and the promotion of the Single European Sky will play a special role in this ecosystem, which will also consider the inclusion of unmanned aerial vehicles.

Smart Routes are aimed at the digitisation of roads and railways, with the development of a framework for the implementation of connected and autonomous vehicles. One of the fundamental aspects will be the standardisation and regulation of vehicle-vehicle and vehicle-infrastructure communications.

In addition, modelling and forecasting systems based on automatic learning and data science will be developed to enable smart transport planning and management. Dynamic traffic control, early recognition of congestion conditions on roads and dynamic driving management are some examples of the application of these developments.

The fourth cornerstone of the plan, Energy Efficiency and Sustainability, focuses on achieving transformation towards a sustainable and energy-efficient transport system in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, rationalise the use of fossil fuels and facilitate the switch to new transport solutions. This line includes initiatives that promote the use of renewable energy generation systems, use of surplus energy for self-consumption or feeding back into the grid, promotion of electric vehicles and other vehicles with alternative energies in transport networks, among others. All of these measures seek to adapt transport elements and direct them towards more sustainable and effective models in order to enable Spain to position itself as a benchmark in the international sector.

Facilitating open innovation and encouraging start-up entrepreneurship through synergies with companies in the Public Works Group is also part of the initiatives of this fourth cornerstone.

The Plan aims to set up an innovative network that integrates and connects all sectors of society, encouraging investment in innovation by large companies and SMEs and actively involving universities, technology centres and entrepreneurs. Within this line, the creation of an ‘Innovation Rail Hub’ seeks to launch collaborative R&D projects that promote railway technology on an international scale.

ILLUSTRATION_JAVIER JUBERA

Experts in public transport innovation

To draft the Plan, Ineco’s Department of Cooperation and Innovation collaborated with a team of experts in innovation from the companies and institutions in the Public Works Group. Adif, Aena, ENAIRE, CRIDA, Spanish Port System and Renfe, together with other institutions such as Cedex and SASEMAR, worked with Ineco on the drafting of a common project:  “We set out a road map –says Rocío Viñas, Ineco’s deputy general director of Cooperation and Innovation– for the next three years with a strategy based on digitisation, the Internet of the future, intermodality and energy transformation.” For Rocío Viñas, analysis of the current situation of innovation projects “reflected the importance not only of sharing knowledge and creating synergies in the Public Works Group, but also of reinforcing collaboration with universities, startups and other companies, fostering and promoting our innovative culture inside and outside the EU.”

According to Javier Rodríguez Barea, Renfe’s manager of Transformation and Digital Innovation, the interesting aspect about this project is that “citizens are at the centre of the Innovation Plan, which acts a great prescriber of a new, more personalised, door-to-door mobility service in an interconnected and smart world, where technology and digitisation are put at the service of the companies in the Public Works Group in order to transform our value proposition towards society and improve user experience in our services.”

For Antonio Berrios, deputy director of Strategic Innovation at Adif, “one of the great contributions and challenges of this Innovation Plan is its cross-cutting vision within the Public Works Group, involving all companies making a technological leap to facilitate solutions that improve the capabilities of all of the modes of transport that travellers and goods units can use in their door-to-door mobility process.”

Along this same line, Juan Puertas Cabot, head of Aena’s Quality, Excellence and Innovation Division, adds that “effective innovation is always orientated towards known customers. The plan has combined the vision of the customer as a passenger on all modes of transport and as a citizen with their needs and expectations. This global vision is necessary to focus on effective innovation in global transport.” Juan Puertas points out that instead of highlighting a single initiative, he would stress the importance of including energy efficiency and sustainability as one of the main cornerstones: “It links with the whole strategy of the Plan, which puts society as a whole at the centre. I believe that a company of the future must necessarily be responsible and innovation is an essential tool to incorporate sustainability into transport processes.” In the case of Aena, within the framework of the Plan, the company is implementing the “digital transformation of the relationship with the passenger, where not only the necessary economic return is taken into account but also a focus on improvement of the passenger experience in the different steps of a customer’s journey at an airport. The firm commitment to this project has been reflected in 15 digital innovation initiatives that will be implemented during the next year.”

Thanks to ICT, transport services can be better designed and managed, addressing the real needs of citizens and interacting with them in real time and within an integrated and sustainable transport system that improves its economic and social profitability

Of the 70 initiatives, Jose Damián López, head of the Infrastructure Technology Department of the Spanish Port System, highlights the Intermodality without barriers (E3L4-2) initiative, because the project “will enable the planning and optimisation of services and infrastructures dedicated to intermodal transport, as well as simplifying administrative procedures through centralisation in the Goods Platform, providing one-stop services and monitoring the status of goods at the same time.” For José Damián López, the Plan also develops –in the field of R&D and innovation– the necessary relationships of trust between the companies in the Public Works Group, diversifying the risks and benefits associated with innovation, and increases “the value of expected results in all of the initiatives by adding to them the talent, knowledge and experience accumulated by the different organisations.”

Fernando Fernández Martín, head of ENAIRE’s European Convergence Division and responsible for the Innovation Plan, points out that it is difficult to choose from among the initiatives included in the Plan. While the Smart ATM initiative is key for ENAIRE (it addresses the evolution of the Spanish Air Traffic Management System to adapt it to the Single European Sky initiative), it would be unfair not to mention the Platform for the management of unmanned aerial vehicle traffic, because it faces the challenge posed by the arrival of unmanned aerial vehicles in our environment, on the one hand to encourage the development of new business models, while preventing this type of vehicle from posing risks for manned aircraft or citizens.

For José Miguel de Pablo, director of CRIDA⁽¹⁾, the Ministry’s Innovation Plan “will enable the promotion and consolidation of the incipient implementation of Big Data techniques at the service of ENAIRE, therefore, improving the efficiency of aerial navigation services. The computing power that is currently available and the increasing degree of maturity of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Machine Learning offer an alternative to the use of conventional techniques, allowing them to overcome their limitations.” The Plan, he adds, “opens up a new horizon of possibilities that can range from improvements in available information and reliability and streamlining of decision making to the automation of processes through the development of intelligent predictive models. And all with one sole purpose: to improve the service provided to the passenger.”

⁽¹⁾ CRIDA is the ATM R&D+innovation Reference Centre, A.I.E. formed by ENAIRE,  (66.66%), Ineco (16.67%) and the Polytechnic University  of Madrid (16.67 %).

The world is increasingly urbanised, and in just a few decades it will be even more so. Cities only make up a tenth of the world’s land, yet today more than 55% of the total population (7,800 million people) live in them. By 2050 this percentage will have reached 70% of the world’s population, estimated at 10,000 million. These are the figures handled by UN-Habitat, the United Nations programme devoted to housing and sustainable urban development, i.e. to ensuring that human settlements are adequate and decent for people and that they respect the environment.

The process of urbanisation –with all its social, economic and environmental repercussions– is happening on a global scale, at an increasingly fast pace and spontaneously, giving rise to urban settlements that lack the minimum infrastructure and services to ensure the quality of life and development of their inhabitants. Adequate planning of both urban growth and transport networks –especially in large metropolitan areas– is one of the keys to making cities into habitable environments that are sustainable, safe, fair and friendly for their inhabitants.

We cannot talk of city planning from one sole point of view or one sole model: we have to consider what makes each urban area unique in order to offer effective solutions that respond to specific problems.

For this, we require political will, commitment from all actors (state, private and civilian), as well as availability of economic and financial resources, which will enable policies and actions to be agreed to achieve a sustainable development model.

In the current context of rapid urbanisation, planning has new challenges to confront, such as slowing down climate change, backing sustainability and fighting against growing social inequality. For this, it is necessary to ensure universal access to basic services such as transport, water, sanitation, energy, communications and equipment.

A highly organised urban model with sufficient equipment and public spaces, affordable housing and sustainable mobility offers people more opportunities of employment and training as well as access to essential services like healthcare and education, among others, thus minimising urban imbalances and inequality.

The United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development, Habitat III, held in Quito, Ecuador, from 17–20 October 2016, brought together over 35,000 participants and covered all these topics through numerous conferences and events in which the various agents debated and presented their proposals to tackle the urban problems of the future. Among its main conclusions were the pursuit of social inclusion and eradication of poverty, sustainable and inclusive urban prosperity, and the assurance of a sustainable, resilient environmental balance through city planning.

The result of this meeting, translated into the so-called New Urban Agenda, gathered and took on the conclusions and commitments made by the international community in another two global forums of colossal importance for the planet’s development: the historic Paris Agreement on Climate (COP21) in December 2015, in which 195 countries signed the first binding global agreement to reduce global warming and slow down climate change, and the 17 goals of the UN’s Sustainable Development Agenda 2030.

In the first row, the Ecuadorian Minister for Urban Development and Housing, Ms Ángeles Duarte, the then Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr Ban Ki-moon, and the Executive Director of UN-Habitat, former Barcelona mayor Mr Joan Clos.

Mobility for urban development: Ineco’s experience

Ineco, as part of the Spanish government’s delegation, took part in this global conference, presenting its planning, consultancy and transport engineering experience, a field in which we have decades of experience, as well as in other, more recently developed sectors linked to sustainable development, such as management of water resources and waste or smart cities.

The company has taken on an extensive range of engineering and consultancy work in these fields, to which it takes a comprehensive approach, marrying the interests of public administrations, businesses and society, and always including the environmental and social aspect to products through environmental assessments and socialisation projects.

As such, Ineco has successfully completed projects of all kinds in relation to urban and interurban mobility: from technical, economic, financial, legal and environmental impact feasibility studies (such as those performed on the Bi-oceanic Corridor for the governments of Bolivia and Peru) to drawing up projects and supervising infrastructure construction (conventional and high-speed railway lines and stations in Spain, Arabia, Turkey, India, etc.), airports, highways, access to ports and logistics centres, etc.

Among the studies carried out by Ineco to improve bus transport have been the reordering of buses in Algiers, the Bus Transport Strategic Plan in Oman, and the sustainable technology study for the buses of São Paulo. In metro systems, we have extensive experience in Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, etc.) and in Medellín, São Paulo and Santiago de Chile. In terms of trams and light metros, also in Spain, we have worked on studies and projects in Madrid, Bilbao, Logroño, Zaragoza, León, Tenerife and Alicante, and on new schemes in Belgrade and Kuwait, as well as studies for tram renovation in Tallinn, in Latvia and in Pavlodar in Kazakhstan. Our suburban railway work includes the comprehensive projects between Caracas and the Valles del Tui in Venezuela, the studies for building a railway system in San José, Costa Rica, the Belgrade Light Metro and the Buenavista-Cuautitlán line in Mexico.

Comprehensive strategic, multimodal planning on a national, regional or local scale is another of the company’s specialities; for over four decades we have cooperated with the Spanish government to develop their national plans –PITVI (the Infrastructure, Transport and Housing Plan) is the most recent– but also with other governments such as those of Ecuador, Costa Rica, Oman and Algeria. Croatia and Malta, which are also planning their national strategies, commissioned a vital part of their plans to Ineco: that of preparing their national transport models (see pages 34-37) which, in Malta’s case, enabled Ineco to take part in the development of the National Transport Strategy, the National Master Plan, and finally the Strategic Environmental Assessment.

On a local level, it is worth mentioning the drawing up of Urban Mobility Plans, management tools to structure mobility policies towards methods for more sustainable movement in municipalities such as Hospitalet de Llobregat (151,000 inhabitants), Logroño (228,000) and A Coruña (244,000), where in addition to optimising public transport we also seek to strengthen non-motorised modes of transport, such as travel by foot or by bicycle.

For example, in Muscat, the capital of Oman, the starting point was one in which there was considerable presence of private vehicles and absence of railway networks, and it was concluded that a new, well-run network of buses would be the basis for the future public transport network. Ineco designed and presented a plan for the city in 2015 (starting with route proposals towards a new management model based on a single transport authority, among many other aspects) and subsequently the Bus Transport Strategic Plan for national public transport operations. The Omani government acquired a modern, state-of-the-art vehicle fleet to equip new urban and long-distance routes, and has put in place, among other means, a new legislative framework which is transforming the public transport system in the Sultanate (see IT57).

Towards the future of the city

Ineco has expanded its activity to planning other public services like water and waste:  as such, it prepared the Master Plan for Comprehensive Waste Management in the Metropolitan District of Quito (see IT58), based on a circular economy strategy with direct application methods and an effective legal framework; and studies for supervising the National Irrigation Plan in Ecuador with the aim of optimising water resource management, and it is elaborating Panama’s National Plan for the Collection and Treatment of Solid Waste, which will set out the means necessary to solve national waste management problems.

For Smart Cities the use of technology enables dynamic, real-time information to be obtained by installing sensors (the “internet of things”) and the vast quantity of data gathered via Big Data platforms to be processed. The Smart City model enables the management of multiple services to be optimised, from waste collection to traffic management, with the resulting benefit to the environment of reducing emissions, energy consumption and water, among other resources. It also enables citizen participation and administrative transparency to be increased. In this field, Ineco is working on the development of its platform CityNECO, with a pilot project for Granada City Council.

In short, the company, which presented some of its projects at Habitat (see News in this issue), believes in and works towards an urban model planned with an agreed comprehensive approach that is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable, with cleaner air, more space for pedestrians, greater abundance of water and biodiversity, and greater involvement of citizens, at the heart of a more polycentric, fluid urban structure in which information is available to assist people’s development and wellbeing.

The Bus Transport Strategic Plan for the Sultanate of Oman will provide the country with a public transport that is modern, efficient, sustainable and equipped with smart technology. The project involves a complete overhaul of both the supply –including new urban and interurban routes– and management of this means of transport in the Sultanate, where the use of private vehicles is heavy.

Throughout these pages we are privileged to have the perspective of Ahmed Al Bulushi, who is piloting the transition towards the future of the company Mwasalat, the national bus operator of Oman. We also address other works abroad, such as that carried out with Aena Internacional at the airport in the capital of Angola –4 de Fevereiro International Airport (Luanda)– the only international airport in the country for which Ineco conducted the operational safety study. Finally, we have dedicated an extensive report to the aeronautical study conducted for the expansion of the Port of Kaohsiung in Taiwan, where the installation of high-altitude cranes may interfere with international airport operations.

Internationalisation has irrefutably been a key event in recent years, a result of the experience and knowledge acquired over the course of decades developing Spanish infrastructure. In this regard, I am pleased to announce the contract signing with the Costa Rican Ministry of Public Works and Transport for management of the Transport Infrastructure Programme (PIT). It is a new opportunity to strengthen ties with a country that Ineco has collaborated with for years, and that we wish to continue supporting in its development.

We are privileged to have the perspective of Ahmed Al Bulushi, who is piloting the transition of the company Mwasalat towards the future

With Ineco’s new showroom –described on the inner pages– we strive to reflect the know-how of Spanish construction and engineering firms and their experience and impact around the world. The new Centre for Interpretation –which I invite our clients and friends to come visit– was recently inaugurated at our central headquarters in Madrid. It is a visit that I am sure will provide great insight into the scope of our works.

Finally, we complete this space with articles from our experts on highly-specialised projects such as variable gauge facilities –a technology pioneered by Spain–, water studies to protect high-speed lines or Big Data and transport. With the publication of these studies and works we hope to contribute to the dissemination of these new technologies in addition to engaging our readers.

The growth projection by 2020 is almost 40ZB (zettabyte, 10²¹ bytes), the majority generated by human beings, followed by physical devices connected to the Internet. Another indicator that allows us to verify this trend is that the Big Data analytics and technology market grows at an annual rate of 20-30%, with an estimated world market of 50 billion euros by 2018.

But it is not simply the amount of data that makes the concept of Big Data unique. We tend to take this concept literally and associate it with a large amount of information, but, as we will see later on, a set of data must have more qualities in order to be considered Big Data.

DEFINITION OF BIG DATA AND ASSOCIATED PROBLEMS

We can talk about Big Data when large amounts of information are generated (Volume) very quickly (Velocity), with heterogeneous types of data (Variety). Recently, the industry has started to add a fourth ‘V’ to these three classic features (the three V’s): Veracity. Given that a large portion of information is directly generated by people, it is necessary that the origin of the data be granted the quality of veracity. There is no point in having a full set of data that is not reliable.

To a great extent, the rise in Big Data technologies has been caused by the social networks, as far as the volume and variety of data are concerned, and by the marketing sector, with regard to the possibilities of demonstrating the value of all the information being generated. Banking is another classic sector that generates and exploits Big Data. The study of the information on uses and habits that can be obtained from banking information makes it possible to design products tailored to customers, or to predict behaviours, such as outstanding payments, according to the correlation of the information available. Engineering firms are also beginning to identify cases of use for which the capacity of Big Data analytics is a competitive advantage.

Finally, the field of the IoT (Internet of Things) and Smart Cities should be noted.
The concept of a Smart City involves an intensive use of information technologies for collecting and processing the information that the city generates using the sensors deployed or other data sources, such as traffic cameras or any other source of unstructured information.

The four qualities that information must have in order to identify with
the concept of big data are: volume, velocity, variety and veracity

THE INDUSTRY’S APPROACH

Big Data projects cannot be efficiently addressed using traditional technologies. The requirements for storing and exploiting such quantities of data, with their qualities of velocity and heterogeneity, have forced the industry to design new technologies that make it possible to work with information in real time, including the previously mentioned characteristics of data volume and variety.

Among the different paradigms presented by the industry when tackling Big Data projects, we can highlight In-Memory (IMDB) technologies and Distributed Systems. In-Memory technology allows all of the information that is necessary to work to be loaded into a memory where the processing is much faster. Furthermore, solutions based on distributed systems are oriented towards parallel processing, allowing a complex problem to be broken down and sorted out by using different machines responsible for solving each part of the original problem. This breakdown allows for the use of affordable computers which together make up a large processing platform. The appearance of Open Source solutions such as Hadoop and Storm has supported this trend.

Additionally, there is a tendency to implement Big Data platforms using cloud services. The problem raised in Big Data projects is infrastructure dimensioning and scalability (growth potential). For this reason, these sorts of projects need to have an infrastructure that is elastic and which allows available resources to be expanded or reduced depending on our requirements at any given moment.

Solutions based on cloud services are going to take the place of private infrastructure contracting (on-premise), as this allows companies to be free from infrastructure installation and maintenance, in order to focus on tasks which contribute value to the project. We are no longer talking about acquiring machines (virtual or physical) where we have installed and configured our own solution, but rather about utilising the services we need at any given time, paying only for the processing time and the storage. For instance, if we need an automatic learning service where we can define a prediction algorithm that works with our own information, contracting the cloud service and only paying for the period of use is sufficient.

WHAT BIG DATA IS HIDING

Once we have this vast amount of data, how do we generate value from our information? There is a misconception that Big Data projects involve storing the existing information and applying a relatively complex technology to analyse what we can obtain. A Big Data project should begin prior to starting to compile information. It is necessary to be sure about the objectives that motivate the project and the type of information we need, as well as to consider all of the constraints involved in the collection and processing of this information.

As opposed to Big Data technology, classic Business Intelligence systems are based on the consolidation of the information which lets us carry out operations with that pre-calculated data. The new Big Data paradigm forces us, on one hand, to be able to analyse the flow of information in real time, and, on the other, to store the raw information. With regard to temperature sensors, for example, we need to record all measurements that the sensor has generated. It is not enough to simply control the average daily temperature, since having the additional information does not allow us to analyse details to be able to predict parameter behaviour or identify behaviour patterns. That is to say that we need to be able to store and analyse the information in its original form, or at a much lower level of detail than in traditional analytical systems.

BIG DATA IN ENGINEERING

The areas of application are far-reaching, ranging from solutions for Smart Cities to automatic learning techniques for predictive maintenance activities. At Ineco we are aware of the importance and the possibilities Big Data technologies have in the field of engineering. Therefore, the Information Technologies division studies and exploits the characteristics of Big Data in different areas. In terms of Smart Cities we work in different fields, among which we can highlight the Smart CityNECO platform, for the integration of information from the various city services (mobility, environment, etc.) allowing for a correct management based on the control panels of the different services provided by the city. In addition, also within the field of Smart Cities, but more specifically concerning the axis of mobility (Smart Mobility), Ineco works in the study and optimisation of mobility in cities by creating prediction and simulation environments in real time that allow the optimal mobility regulation parameters in the different areas of the city to be determined. This solution is based on integrating the simulation models, as well as on the automatic learning techniques, by working with the information concerning the city’s state of mobility in real time.

A big data project must be sure about the objectives and the type of information we need, as well as consider the constraints involved in the collection and processing of this information

Within the field of infrastructure maintenance, predictive maintenance is based on anticipating the problem before it becomes a reality, or before its state loses the optimal conditions. This way, we lengthen the time between maintenance activities, thus improving availability while saving on costs. In this field, we develop predictive techniques using measurements from different parameters thanks to sensors which allow a relationship with their service life to be established. The difference with traditional techniques lies in automatically combining all information regarding their state, characteristics, exploitation and environmental conditions.

Within the area of mobility surveys and capacity, Ineco works on a mobile device survey platform that allows all information relevant to these types of studies to be compiled, including the responses provided by the user, location information provided by the GPS, etc. Additionally, with regard to the answers given using natural speech, we can conduct what is called a ‘Sentiment Analysis’ (opinion mining) which lets us identify the speaker’s attitude towards an issue.

Furthermore, we cannot forget that Big Data does not only consider alphanumeric information. Thus, another area of research focuses on image processing. The objective is to locate defects or objects in an automated way.

To sum up, we are undergoing a digital transformation which, combined with interconnection capacities, is exponentially increasing the amount of information generated. We live in the ‘Time of Data’ and the capacity to analyse that information is going to mark the difference in all fields of business.