IEEE Electrification Magazine - March 2016 - 9

overflowing, with their intended contents scattered across
the ground, or experienced congestion that creates gridlock on the roads or overflowing subway stations. In the
smart cities model, visitor information can be used with
other available information to inform planning officials
days or weeks ahead of the event and in real time during
the event. Officials working for sanitation and waste can
then make sure that those bins are emptied before they
overflow, and city traffic and subway officials can change
traffic-light patterns and adjust train schedules to minimize the amount and duration of congestion before, during, and following an event.
My beloved travel guidebooks still have a secure place
in my heart, but with these new app capabilities, they may
best be used for planning before the trip. Just as my personal bicycle is left behind when I travel from the United
States to Coruña, so will my Coruña guidebook. In each
case, it is more practical to have these items available at
my destination to use as needed, especially for those who
prefer to travel light.

Beyond Tourism: a Smart city Platform
to Optimize all city Functions
As shown in Figure 4, numerous pilot programs have
been launched that leverage the potential of the Smart
Coruña platform to manage and optimize city services.
For public officials, city managers, and citizens, many of
these applications can be accessed through a common
web portal or separately on apps that can be downloaded
for Android or iOS devices. In some cases, application
access may be limited just to a community of subjectmatter experts or officials with an appropriate need to
know based on the specific technical or security requirements of certain city functions.

Improving Water Management, Safety, and Efficiency
As Coruña is located on a peninsula surrounded by the
Atlantic Ocean, the management, distribution, and quality
of its fresh-water resources is of utmost importance, as is
keeping seawater out of the sewage and drinking water
systems, and vice versa. The most extensive implementation of the Smart Coruña platform to date has been in the
management of Coruña's water resources (Figure 5). The
following water management pilot applications and systems have been developed for integration with Sofia2 as
part of the Smart Coruña program.

Figure 6. Smart Coruña: open data for all citizens.

Water System Bioacoustics
A new technology has been implemented based on bioacoustics that allows the detection of leaks or other irregularities in the distribution network through an analysis
of the acoustic qualities of the pipe network. The generation of patterns facilitates the identification of anomalies
and the prediction of failures, enabling the anticipation of
any leaks and the implementation of corrective action to
minimize water loss and potential service interruptions.

Smart Irrigation
Indra partners Macraut Ingenieros and Sigesel collaborated
to design an automated irrigation system managed by
Sofia2 that would result in more efficient irrigation and optimization of the use of water resources in Coruña's parks and
public gardens. Sensors installed at the city parks and public
gardens measure soil moisture, humidity, rainfall, and
wind. These sensors are monitored by an application built

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Electrification Magazine - March 2016