Urban Planning, Ecological Transition, Urban Services and Housing

Using drones enables analyses of trends in crowd numbers on beaches, providing beach-goers with real-time information on beach occupancy levels and obtaining high added-value results such as the distribution of people per day of the week or time slot. The service also enables water-quality monitoring and has taken part in a simulation coordinated with the city’s security and emergency forces.

The technology was presented today at one of Barcelona Innova Week’s notable activities, an event on until Sunday where city residents can experience innovation at first hand.

Use of such technology offers full legal guarantees for personal data protection, digitals rights and ethical data management, given that the real-time image-processing system anonymises them during the generation process itself and eliminates the originals immediately afterwards.

The project is one of the first initiatives from the Barcelona Urban Innovation Lab, which is managed by the BIT Habitat municipal foundation, a service which, on the one hand, facilitates tests on innovative solutions geared to the city’s urban needs and, on the other, offers enterprises and organisations an opportunity to test out solutions at the developmental state in real environments.

Pilot tests have been made beyond this service, enabling drones to be used for supervising the demolition of the Boo Beach Club Restaurant, located at Bac de Roda breakwater, and photographs to be gathered detailing the development of the restaurant’s demolition. An estimation was also made on 24 September 2022, in coordination with the Barcelona Institut of Culture, of the number of people taking part in the La Mercè Festival’s Diada Gegantera [Giant Figures Day] in Barcelona’s Plaça de Sant Jaume. On that occasion the estimate was taken from the City Hall’s roof terrace, to avoid having the drones hovering above the crowds.