MITMA Group companies, including Ineco, have joined the STEAM Alliance for female talent. On 9 February, the signing ceremony of the protocol took place with the Ministers of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda and Education and Vocational Training, Raquel Sánchez and Pilar Alegría, respectively, and the presidents of Adif, Renfe, ENAIRE, Aena, Puertos del Estado and Ineco, Sergio Vázquez (third from the left). 

Under the slogan ‘Girls in Science’, the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training is promoting this initiative in the public and private sectors to “encourage the interest of girls and young women in disciplines related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics” (STEAM).

Supporting the STEAM vocations of girls and women in education is a priority issue not only for the United Nations, which includes it in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, but also for the European Union and the government of Spain, which has included it in the Digital Spain 2025 Agenda. Meanwhile, Ineco has made equality one of the pillars of its strategic business plan.

Whether it is a cargo terminal, a yacht club, a luxury marina or a waste collection service, the facilities and services of Spanish ports are subject to a public concession. This is due to the fact that Spanish law establishes that both the land and sea areas where port activity takes place are State property. Therefore, they constitute a public domain, and cannot be sold or seized, although they may be occupied and their use can be conceded to the private sector for a specific period of time paying the corresponding fees.

These services subject to concession include port services, such as berthing, loading and unloading, stowage, pilotage and towing, repairs, supplies (water, fuel, electricity, cleaning, etc.), and commercial services: hotel and catering or nautical sports and leisure activities, among others; some with high added value, such as those linked to luxury nautical sports, a booming sector with a high economic impact on port hinterland (area of influence).

Among the services subject to a concession are those relating to the port itself and commercial services

For each case, the awarding of port services and activities is carried out through legal authorisation, for those that do not require permanent infrastructures, and for a maximum of three years, or through a public concession, at the request of the applicant or at the initiative of the port authority. The duration of concessions is very important to the operation of the port system, as applicants must make a long-term plan, propose new investments and assume all financial risks in compliance with the parameters established by current legislation.

Since 2015, Ineco has been providing technical support to Puertos del Estado for the analysis of the files subject to these extensions. More than 300 extension requests have been submitted to 28 port authorities.

Port of Valencia pilots’ base. / PHOTO_VALENCIAPORT

Since the start of the project, Puertos del Estado has coordinated meetings with the different port authorities together with Ineco and has participated in the preliminary work to standardise the criteria for processing the requests for extension of deadlines, in order to improve the analysis and speed up the drafting and issuing of reports.

It should be noted that, due to the procedure carried out, and reviewed at the end by Puertos del Estado with the company’s support, concessionaires are making significant investments to improve the productivity and environmental quality of their operations, by introducing new technologies that increase their competitiveness in the ports.

Ineco also provides technical assistance for land valuations, reports on the concessionary use of lighthouses and advice on the management of extensions.

More involvement of the private sector

In addition to extending the maximum limit of the concessions, Royal Decree Law 8/2014 has also made other changes in the management of Spanish ports, which open up new ways of participation for the private sector. Among them, a new case of extraordinary extension associated with the funding of port connectivity infrastructures and improvement of freight transport networks, as well as the creation of the Financial Fund for Land Access to Ports. With these measures, the extension of the concessions is linked to the contribution of the successful bidders to the improvement of land connections to ports, promoting their intermodality, one of the main axes of national and European transport policies.

Another of the novelties of the 2014 regulatory change was the lifting of the ban on the use of certain disused port infrastructures located within the public port domain, such as lighthouses, for hotel, hostel or accommodation purposes. Puertos del Estado launched the project ‘Spanish Lighthouses’ (see ITRANSPORTE 60) in 2015 to give new complementary uses to part of these facilities such as the lighthouse keepers’ dwellings, without affecting their operation as maritime signalling elements, while ensuring their conservation as historical heritage. Therefore, 187 lighthouses throughout Spain were analysed and inventoried for this purpose. Ineco developed the website that gives visibility to the initiative, and the platform on which the inventory can be accessed.

Ineco organised a visit to the port of Valencia, in coordination with the Directorate of Operations of Puertos del Estado, to know in detail its operation and internal structure.

Although some of them already had facilities such as exhibition halls, training or research centres or cafeterias, until 2014 none of them had been converted into tourist accommodation, as has already been done in other European countries, the USA, Chile, South Africa or Australia. As part of the port public domain, the refurbishment and operation of the former lighthouse keepers’ dwellings is subject to a public concession, pending the approval of the corresponding port authority. The Isla Pancha Lighthouse, in Lugo was the first to be converted into a hotel in 2017, followed by Punta Cumplida, in Tenerife, in 2020, through a 35-year public concession awarded to the German company Floatel. In the meantime, half a dozen other similar projects are still in the pipeline throughout Spain.

Apps that predict the location of traffic jams; optimised street lighting and irrigation for green spaces; train stations that communicate with taxi and bike operators; smart airports that recognise passengers; and digitalised ports that connect ships to the power grid to reduce their engine emissions… The functionalities provided by artificial intelligence, Big Data and robotics are already a reality that is transforming the mobility of our cities, which, according to the UN, are home to 55% of the world’s population. The goal is to exploit all of our technological resources to make them more efficient and, above all, more sustainable and environmentally-friendly.

With this in mind, the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) convened the tenth session of the World Urban Forum, which was hosted by the emirate of Abu Dhabi from the 8 to 13 February 2020. A group of businesses backed by the Ministry for Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda together operated a 100m² stand at the event: Adif, Aena, Puertos del Estado, Renfe and Ineco were among those in attendance to present their proposals for more sustainable, inclusive, safe and resilient cities.

The forum, under the motto of Cities of Opportunities: Connecting Culture and Innovation, is the principal international stage for debating and sharing experiences related to urban issues

At the forum, the Spanish government also presented Spain’s Urban Agenda, the result of its commitment to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The Agenda, approved in 2019, is a roadmap that aims to guide all of Spain’s towns and cities, regardless of their size, towards a more economically, socially and environmentally equitable, integrated and sustainable future by the year 2030. The Agenda offers a Decalogue of Strategic Goals, which, in turn, feature a total of 30 specific goals and 291 lines of action.

The forum, under the motto of ‘Cities of Opportunities: Connecting Culture and Innovation’, is the principal international stage for debating and sharing experiences related to urban issues The event was attended by more than 18,000 delegates from approximately 170 countries, representing mostly institutions, ranging from national and local governments, non-governmental organisations, the private sector and the academic world.

One of the organisations in attendance was Spanish railway operator Renfe. The rail operator, which presented the Haramain project at the stand, is working on its new ‘mobility as a service’, ‘Renfe as a Service (RaaS)’ platform back in Spain. The platform aims to integrate different modes of both public and private transport into one single application.

In addition, Puertos del Estado, which comprises and coordinates the 28 port authorities in charge of Spain’s 46 ports, presented its Ports 4.0 project. The Ports 4.0 project establishes an equity fund to finance innovative projects in new technologies and business models based on the 4.0 economy, via a public requests for tenders.

In the aviation sector, Spanish airport operator Aena is focusing on the concept of smart airports: its lines of action include a pilot project for biometric technology and digital identity (facial recognition) at its Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport and its airport in Menorca, as well as testing drones for different uses within the airport environment.

Adif, Spain’s railway infrastructure administrator, has activated a plan to digitalise its network of long-distance and AVE train stations, aiming to convert them into ‘intelligent stations’ that will connect to other transport systems and different city services. 

Smart projects from Ineco

Cityneco: LAUNCHED IN GRANADA

The Director of Ineco, José Ángel Higueras, (first from the right) presents the Cityneco model to the Ministry of Transport’s Deputy Director of Urban Policy, Ángela de la Cruz (centre). / PHOTO_INECO + LUMIERE ADVERTISERS

Ineco demonstrated its Cityneco Mobility model at the stand. The model city, constructed from Lego pieces, allowed delegates to observe the functions of its Cityneco platform through its augmented reality application. The company developed the technology platform for the smart management of different urban services in 2016, as part of an innovation project in which it partnered with the Granada City Council to pilot the platform in the city. The platform has since been updated to a new version 2.0.

Specifically designed to facilitate mobility, the model’s modular architecture and layered structure make it easily scalable and interoperable. A Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) version makes Cityneco available to medium-sized cities without their own infrastructure.

A visitor tests virtual reality glasses. / PHOTO_INECO + LUMIERE ADVERTISERS

The platform features several vertical modules, one for each of a local council or organisation’s management areas. Its modular architecture facilitates the incorporation of new vertical levels to adapt to new requirements. Its IoT functionality (the Internet of Things), allows it to connect to sensors located throughout the city while simultaneously integrating and processing multiple sources of information, from social networks to video feed.

The information is displayed simply and intuitively through dashboards, based on both real-time data and management indicators, and in the case of mobility, with a GIS viewer (Geographical Information System).

A connected campus for the University of Almería

The University of Almería (UAL), founded in 1993, is not the first Spanish university to introduce smart-management projects for its services and infrastructure, but it is the first to have a Master Plan for their implementation, which it asked Ineco to design. With a few methodological adjustments, the document incorporates smart-management proposals similar to those that would be applied to a small city.

The work, which was carried out over the course of 2019, includes a model for a smart campus, a diagnosis of the University’s current state of technological or smart development, the objective to be achieved and a roadmap of necessary actions.

View of the UAL campus. / PHOTO_UAL

At just over five kilometres east of the city of Almería and a few meters from the sea, the UAL is a small to medium-sized public university situated very close to the Natural Park of Cabo de Gata-Níjar. Despite being located in a water-deficient province, the university benefits from abundant sunshine and regular winds that it can use to obtain clean energy. The plan, therefore, concentrates on environmental initiatives to create a green smart-campus with particular emphasis placed on optimising its water and energy consumption. Given its location outside of the city centre, which makes access on foot difficult and generates high levels of private vehicle use, another priority is to improve the university’s mobility framework.

The UAL is the first Spanish university to have a Master Plan for the implementation of SMART-MANAGEMENT initiatives thanks to Ineco

In total, the plan covers 21 services, grouped in nine sub-areas: urban environment (maintenance and irrigation of gardens, air quality, noise and light pollution), waste management (cleaning roads and buildings, and waste collection), energy (electricity and gas consumption in buildings, public lighting, clean energy generation), water (water consumption and quality, sanitation and sewage network management), parking (car park management), traffic control (vehicle influx, internal bicycle and scooter traffic, charging points for electric vehicles, information on modes of transport), accessibility, public infrastructure and urban equipment, (management and maintenance, incident detection) and an innovation ecosystem.

Below: bicycles parked in front of lecture theatre IV; promoting sustainable mobility is a cornerstone of the plan. / PHOTO_UAL

In order to establish the current technological advancement of the services, six levels were defined: basic, initiation (UAL’s current level) intermediate, advanced, very advanced and connected. The objective is to reach the ‘connected’ level, which specifies that at least 80% of the services must be interconnected.

The Master Plan includes indicators to measure UAL’s smart progress and establishes a Steering and Coordination Committee and a Monitoring Committee, as well as suggesting a two-yearly revision of the document to keep it up to date.

Is the future of lighthouses at risk?

Not at all. As a aid to navigation, they continue to serve as a unique point of reference for a large number of smaller vessels, as well as a verification point, and when necessary, a backup for electronic positioning systems.

Obviously, they are not as crucial as they were years ago, but advances in lighting technology and control, reducing consumption and monitoring their operation, make it viable to keep the lighthouse in service, and more efficiently than before.

With regard to the buildings that are not in use, normally the homes of the former lighthouse keepers, it is vital to create initiatives that ensure their conservation, and in many cases their refurbishment.

Have any new lighthouses been built in Spain?

The last one was put into service at the end of 1999, the Torredembarra lighthouse, which is attached to the Tarragona Port Authority. However, in the Canary Islands there are some lighthouses still to be built, as a result of the last review of the coastal networks, and these have already been included, in one way or another, in the General Maritime Signalling Plan, 1985.

However, to answer your question, yes. Due to the expansion of the Port of Valencia, the Valencia lighthouse has been replaced by a new one, made of composite (composite resin), on the new breakwater, with an LED optical system and hybrid solar-wind power, designed to operate using clean energy.

What will the lighthouses of the future be like?

Understanding a lighthouse as a maritime light signal supplemented by the landmark represented by the tower during the day, I don’t believe that they will change much from the classic image, although glass lenses and incandescent lamps will no longer be used. The lighthouses of the future, and already in the present, will be supplemented with the broadcasting of electronic information, using, for example, Automatic Identification System (AIS) technology.

It is important to remember that lighthouses are technical installations designed to provide a service, which will use the technology available at any given time, and which the users are capable of “seeing”, either directly or with the help of instruments.

Many lighthouses are over one hundred years old, is modern technology compatible with their design?

Most are more than 150 years old. They date back to the first Maritime Signalling Plan of 1847, which marks its 170th anniversary this year. We just celebrated the 175th anniversary of the first session of the Spanish Lighthouse Commission (22 February 1842), which was created on 4 February of that year.

It is vital that we all work to ensure the conservation of the historical legacy of the lighthouses

Their design is simple and that simplicity guarantees its validity. It involves placing a light at a certain height (depending on the height of the land) so that it can be seen by sailors from a distance of between 10-20 nautical miles. The tower is the support and the lantern is the glassed space that protects the lens system (lamp and lens). The new lamp technology does have to adapt to the requirements of large glass optics, but it is possible, and desirable, to maintain the existing optical elements and upgrade the lamp to the technology available. In most cases it is simple and inexpensive.

Are there still lighthouse keepers? What role do they play these days?

It’s not the case for lighthouse keepers, but there are lighthouses that are inhabited by a technician who is not exclusively dedicated to the maintenance of the lighthouse, but is also responsible for monitoring other aids to navigation in the vicinity, as well as inspecting third-party aids in the area. They are not civil servants; they belong to the staff of the port authority.

How will the commercialization of these spaces contribute to their conservation?

The existence of unused spaces creates two major problems: on the one hand, degradation in the harsh environment, and on the other, the risk of vandalism. Therefore, since it is not necessary for technicians to be present at all times in the lighthouses, the development of their supplementary uses is a successful alternative to conserve them through the vital renovations required to develop new uses.

On the other hand, the income generated by these uses, which will never be significant in the port sector, will be a supplement to the revenues collected from the aid to navigation service fee and will allow the quality of the aid to navigation service, which will always be the goal of the lighthouses, to be improved.

What are the risks and advantages?

I think the advantages have already been discussed in the previous questions, in addition to the fact that opening these lighthouse spaces, which are currently closed, to society in general, would maintain their function and exterior architecture, as a reflection of their historical legacy, which, among other things, has to be conserved.

I don’t see any significant risks or at least any that cannot be managed with the proper measures. On the contrary, significant risks could occur if the unused spaces of the lighthouses are not used, since vandalism or degradation can leave them in ruins in no time at all, bearing in mind that the quality of the construction of the houses of the old lighthouse keepers is rather poor.

All the neighbouring countries have successfully developed similar initiatives to make use of the unused spaces of their lighthouses for tourism, as a strategy to conserve them. These include, among others, the United Kingdom (England and Scotland), Ireland, South Africa, Norway and, recently, Italy, with a new project that covers initiatives with more than 50 lighthouses.

How has Ineco’s inventory contributed? Has it revealed anything new?

The inventory done by Ineco, with the information provided by the port authorities, has meant, on the one hand, an update of the information of the unused spaces available in the lighthouses and, on the other hand, the uses that are being developed in those spaces, revealing, in some cases, that the information held by Puertos del Estado was not updated, either due to unreported uses (when it was not mandatory) or uses that were not ultimately implemented.