Last week (17th and 18th of February), Geotec team were in Madrid to attend the KickOff of the OpenDataCity project (“OpenCityData: Red temática española de datos abiertos en las ciudades inteligentes”, http://opencitydata.es/). OpenDataCity is a thematic network funded by MINECO with reference id TIN2014-53161-REDT (Redes de excelencia 2014).

The project started in Dec 2014 and ends in Nov 2016. Coordinated by Oscar Corcho (OEG, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), the network has 9 founding members:  IAAA – Universidad de Zaragoza, GRIHO – Universitat de Lleida, MoreLab – Universidad de Deusto, ARC La Salle – Universitat Ramon Llul, Quercus – Universidad de Extremadura,  Laboratorio de Bases de Datos – Universidade da Coruña, Khaos – Universidad de Málaga and GEOTEC – Universitat Jaume I.

The first day consisted of overview presentations and dicussion about the objectives and scope of the network, including presentations by each founding member about their research groups and activities related to the network.

The second day took place in Medialab-Prado and it was divided in two parts. During the first part, only for network members, we prepared a Manifesto in order to ask for the administrations how they should manage their cities to be open and smart. In the second part, the network was presented publicly to a wider audience, among whom were mayors, councillors and technicians of public administrations.