RECI. The Spanish Network of Intelligent Cities

For me it's a pleasure to talk about RECI, first of all because it’s an asset that Spain has in the field of Smart Cities, being the largest initiative at European level of collaboration between cities in such field of Smart Cities and secondly because I have the privilege of being the coordinator of its energy group on behalf of Murcia together with my colleague and friend Carlos Ventura Quilón, CTO of Rivas Vaciamadrid. Therefore, it is easy to notice in my words how proud I am of being able to participate so actively in RECI.

RECI It is the largest national alliance for sharing knowledge and fostering cooperation and joint development in the smart city field. It is composed of the 81 most important cities in Spain and represents a global example of cooperation between cities that has led to enormous progress in the field of Smart City in Spain in recent years.

The key has been to share knowledge, learn from each other and create synergies between cities to take advantage of the experience of those more advanced in the race for providing the best public services to our citizens. When talking about Smart Cities, we must bear in mind that it is not conceivable that a city is capable of evolving on its own and without help until it becomes a Smart City. You need to grow, evolve inspiring and learning from other cities to have as a reference and with which you can share knowledge and that can guide you on that path.

That is precisely what the RECI represents. A network of cities that share, collaborate and unite to be stronger and better prepared to face the challenges of urban development, the evolution of urban services and the demand for better quality of life of its inhabitants. The work within the RECI is structured in 5 working groups: Social innovation, Energy, Environment and infrastructures, Mobility, Government and economy. At present, Hospitalet de Llobregat chairs RECI and previously was the city of Santander which held this position, now both can be considered as European leader in creating a smart city ecosystem in their cities. Another 2 cities hold the vicepresidency of RECI, Logro?o and Rivas Vaciamadrid, where was held on the 9th and 10th April, 2018 the last technical committee of the network and a public dissemination event where relevant companies as Huawei, Philips and important speakers in the field of smart cities as Enrique Martínez Marín, Coordinator of the “Spanish programme for Smart Cities”, Inés Leal , Managing Director of the Spanish Congress of Smart Cities and Frans-Anton Vermast , Senior Strategy Advisor and Smart City Ambassador - Amsterdam Smart City enriched the event with their insights about the future of cities and how to set strategies to successfully evolve as smart cities.

(Panel discussion in RECI dessimination event with Curro Garcia (Rivas), David Quirós (Hospitalet) Inés Leal)

During the event we had the opportunity to check the progress made by Rivas Vaciamadrid in different public services such ligthing , security and building monitoring, below you have a video (in Spanish) with an overview of what projects they have developed in the Smart city field.

 I take advantage to suggest you to check out Convercities, It’s a live messenger community for city managers that I use that allow you talk to your peers to find out about the latest concepts, technologies and services.  Share your experience, get tips and feedback. 

Finally one last suggestion: