IMI

From 4 to 6 November, Barcelona once again became the global epicentre of smart cities with the celebration of the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC). The Municipal Institute of Information Technology (IMI) had an active and significant presence at the Barcelona City Council stand, contributing to the city’s story under the slogan “Barcelona, ​​living city”. This story highlights a city that innovates to regenerate itself, uses technology to improve people’s lives and is committed to sustainability, justice and transparency.

Notable projects with IMI participation

The IMI, in collaboration with other municipal areas, presented several projects that exemplify Barcelona’s smart city model:

– The Barcelona AI Model: An ethical, sustainable and democratic approach to the adoption of artificial intelligence to improve public services and empower citizens. At IMI we promote the City Council’s digital transition with a people-centred, environmentally-friendly AI.

– Transformation Plan for Social Services: with the new Barcelona Social app, the relationship between citizens and social services is improved, facilitating the management of appointments, documents and communications. The project has been developed with the active participation of service users and professionals. Together with the IMSS

– PODIUM: European project for connected and cooperative mobility. We contribute to technical interoperability between municipal systems to improve the mobility of emergency vehicles.

– Digital twins – EDIC CitiVERSE: The IMI, with the support of Jordi Ortuño as vice-president representing Barcelona City Council, is co-leading the creation of a European ecosystem of urban digital twins. We are collaborating with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in the development of the vCity platform.

Presentations in the agora of the municipal stand and in the central agora of the SmartCity

The IMI participated in two presentations in the agora of the City Council stand:

– PODIUM: Making Mobility more efficient and safe with CCAM (Tuesday, 4 November, 10:30 am – 10:50 am, in English), with the participation of Jordi Ortuño, who explained the value of technical interoperability and the adaptation of municipal ICT systems.

– Transformation of assistance in social services in Barcelona (Tuesday, 4 November, 11:00 am – 11:20 am, in Catalan), with Xavier Folch and Jordi Boix, who presented the IMI’s contribution to the technological development of the new social assistance platform.

It also played a prominent role in presentations at the global Smart City stand with a presentation by EDIC, Deputy Chair of Citiverse EDIC on LDT in the session “Citiverse EDIC on LDT takes off” organised by our colleague Jordi Ortuño, in which different speakers from all over Europe participated and explained the advances they have made in the smart city ecosystem around Local Digital Twins, and which concluded with the signing of the service commission agreement with the new director of LDT CitiVERSE EDIC, Jan Wester.

David Esteban, director of the Information Security Directorate, participated in the panel “Collaboration& Policy – ​​Building secure & harmonized cities in Europe” where public-private collaboration was discussed as the key to building more secure, resilient and sustainable digital ecosystems.

They shared reflections on how cities, companies and institutions can work together to protect critical services and create trusting environments for citizens.

Visits and meetings with international delegations

The IMI played a leading role in the reception and exchange of knowledge with various international delegations:

– Delegation of Mayors from Brazil (3/11/25): Reception in the Sala Barcelona, ​​with presentation of the City Council’s Digital Transformation policies by Fernando Marin, and exhibition on process automation by Carmen Duque and Andrés Juan.

– Tokyo Metropolitan Government Delegation (3/11/25): Reception by Emili Rubió and Patricia Moreno, with presentation of Barcelona’s digitalisation strategy and Artificial Intelligence initiatives.

– Delegation from Roraima (Brazil) (5/11/25): Technical visit to the Sentilo Platform, hosted by Jordi Cirera, with presentation of practical cases of Sentilo application and urban data governance models.

– Smart City Institute Japan/Nikkei (5/11/25): Reception by Emili Rubió and Patricia Moreno at Barcelona Activa, with debate on the use of AI, ethical governance and Barcelona’s international positioning in AI projects. Interview for Nikkei magazine.

– Remote academic interview for PhD thesis (Brazil): Fernando Marin collaborated on a thesis on public policies for digital transformation, answering questions about the challenges and impact of smart city initiatives in Barcelona.

The IMI’s participation in SCEWC 2025 was key to showing Barcelona’s commitment to innovation, digitalisation and international collaboration. Meetings with delegations from around the world and the presentation of pioneering projects consolidate the IMI’s status as a benchmark in the digital transformation of cities.