Las Rozas “Las Rozas Next Smart City”
Las Rozas is a municipality located in the northwest suburbs of Madrid region, halfway between the capital city and the National Park “Cumbres de la Sierra de Guadarrama”, with a high standard of well-being, magnificent services, high education rates and a spectacular green environment. Our city is determined to become a center of urban innovation.
Digital Transformation, Innovation, Sustainability and Green Smart City policies are the key to success. This is what will lead us to offer our citizens and neighbours a better future.
Las Rozas has been awarded not only as part of ICC programme, but also it has been recently recognised with the ISR Expansión Award for its environmental and sustainability local strategy, as well as finalist of the Enertic 2020 Awards in the category of Smart Mobility due to an innovative hybrid point of electric recharging with renewable energy.
Some of the most relevant policy strategies in the last years have been the approval of the Smart City Master Plan 2016-2023, the Strategic Innovation Plan 2019-2023 and the Investment Plan 2020, approved with the biggest political support in its history with 80% of its members voting in favour. The first two, focus on the technological strategy and the innovative eco-system strategy, whereas the third one focuses on the economic resources assigned to each of the measures planned in both the previous.
With 120 million budget, some projects that have already been launched are the installation of hyperconvergence nodes, PoC of artificial intelligence predictive data models, GIS website publication, Smart City app, Intelligent Tourism app, 010 telephone attention service and virtual office, installation of LED in 80% of the streets or renovation of boilers to improve the energy efficiency of buildings.
In terms of overall status, Las Rozas belongs to several networks holding a relevant position, such as being Board Directive member of the Spanish Network of Smart Cities “RECI”, or being one of the pioneering cities member of the Spanish Climate Change Local Network who opened the first sustainability office in Spain.
One of our major challenges, is to consolidate the competitiveness of our city and its business eco-system. At present, economic, business and social development programs are being launched to facilitate professional insertion through orientation, improvement of training and entrepreneurship, connecting people and company needs, and supporting public-private alliances in order to promote STEAM economy and RDi.
Besides, Las Rozas is the third largest municipality in Madrid. Mobility is an ongoing challenge on the City Council's agenda, which is working for an efficient, green and effective solution. The municipality wants to promote connections between business parks, improving internal mobility and facilitating communications with Madrid using new means of transport. In this sense, we have created a public enterprise with the duty of investing in public innovation as well as transportation.
In terms of citizen security, the City Council has carried out a video surveillance pilot project in order to prevent crimes and thefts. Artificial intelligent cameras, which are managed by the Local Police, have been installed along the city. But to make Las Rozas a true innovative city in security, our aim is to build up a business intelligent platform which can monitor the information obtained by sensors, cameras and other devices. This will help to carry out a cross-analysis of data, providing holistic knowledge and adding value through the implementation of prediction and simulation tools. We expect that this, linked to the mentioned innovation hub, can make Las Rozas a pioneering city in the field of Intelligent Operations Centers.
