Tarragona: Roman amphitheatre

Introduction
For this assignment, we have to choose the city where we came from, our hometown.
We have to analyse its policies and activities that makes it a smart city. To do this work
out, we have to think about five smart solutions that are or can be developed in order to
write about it and make a good proposal.
I am going to do this work out about Tarragona, my home town, and the place where I
have been living for 22 years, before I left it to find other opportunities in Madrid.
Tarragona is located in Catalonia, in the north-east of Spain on the Mediterranean Sea.
Tarragona is known for its ancient history. Tarragona was the principal military base of
the Roman Empire in Hispania, with Cornelio Escipin, from where the Romans
conquered the entire peninsula. Currently, it preserves a big amount of patrimony from
these times. The most relevant is the amphitheatre, but also there is the forum, a part of
the circus and all the walls that surrounded the city. Moreover, there are some other
historical buildings close to the city such as the aqueduct named Pont del Diable.
In 2007 Tarragona is going to be the host of the Mediterranean Games. As a
consequence, the city is preparing for this event and it has been developing during the
previous years as a smart city to be prepared for this competition.

In 2011 Tarragona was named the host of the XVII Mediterranean Games, it was the
smallest city that has been awarded with the games. Celebrating the games provides
popularity, resources and jobs and an increase of visitors from all around the world.
For this reason Tarragona had an opportunity to improve a change. But why did
Tarragona decided to transform into a Smart City? The economic crisis has made
everyone about the future. Tarragona doesnt want to build blindly to leave a ghost city
after the games. The philosophy is to do more with less.
Tarragona is also known for being the entrance to Europe and for the amount of tourism
that it attracts because of the leisure activities such as Port Adventure, the beach, etc.
Tarragona is using technology to improve the management of water energy mobility
health and heritage. This is the legacy that will leave Tarragona after the Mediterranean
games.

Smart solutions
Water
In Spain we are lucky that we dont have to worry to have access to water in our
everyday lives. However, the waste of water is very important and we are not really
aware about the effects and implications of bad consumption habits.
One of the key objectives of the Tarragonas smart model is related with water.
Although the citizens in Tarragona have always water in our homes, in Tarragona we
know that water is not an infinite resource. It was in 1988 when Tarragona had for the
first time the possibility to have water at home, due to the transfer of water from the
Ebro river, the longest river in Spain which ends in the south of the province of
Tarragona. Moreover, during the spring of 2008 we had the last drought episode.
Inside the Tarragona smart city there are three main lines in the water environment. First
of all, work towards the achievement of a responsible consumption. Secondly, improve
the optimization of its management. And finally, the relationship between the population
and the water as an element of Mediterranean ecosystems.
In terms of responsible consumption, Tarragona is going to implement the telemetry of
water counters. A new technology which will allow the access of particulars, companies
and administrations to detailed information of their water consumption. Moreover, it
will provide the users to customize their counters with systems of awareness and
prevention of bad use, saving and good practices diffusion. In the same line, Tarragona
will build an infrastructure of intelligent irrigation systems in parks and gardens. This
new tool will allow finding leaks, to adapt automatically to the weather conditions, and
optimize the consumption of water to the real needs of the moment.

Energy and environment

One of the main axes where the definition of a smart city is the one that defines its
growth and reconversion that the city has towards a city respectful with the
environment.
Big cities concentrate the vast majority of population and economic activities. The main
model of economy and living is based on the consumption of energy, especially, fossil
fuels.
Some of the main concerns about energy are: our dependency of energetic supply, the
political tensions in the countries with the main production, and the environmental
damages that are a result of the use of this energy model.
Tarragona has joined the Pacto de Alcaldes, which has been driven by the European
Comission, the November of 2008, and elaborated a action plan Plan para la energa
Sostenible en Tarragona (PAES). In this action plan there are written the axes of public
intervention and the actions required to compliment the change towards the mitigation
of the climate change.
Among the ideas to achieve this situation, Tarragona has to take measures on energetic
efficiency and socioeconomic.
Due to the fact that Tarragona is the home of the most relevant chemical companies
from the world, (BASF, Dow Chemical, Lyondellbasell, Repsol, etc.) this industrial
sector has an important role on this strategy towards a better energy use and to be
respectful with the environment. These companies would have to implement innovative
projects and techniques and materials that are more efficient.
As an example, BASF, which is in front of a neighbourhood of Tarragona, has presented
a project to rehabilitate the buildings by constructing a thermal isolation that allows
reducing the waste of energy and the CO2 emissions. The Cesar August school, which is
in front of the factory, has injected an substance on the walls that has isolated all the
building without the need to modify the structure of the school.

Health
The celebration of the Mediterranean Games is an opportunity to promote healthy
routines related with the sports on our lives.
One of the objectives of Tarragona Smart Mediterranean City is to become Tarragona as
a Health Living Lab, connecting the physical activity as an instrument of quality of life
and health. A Health Living Lab is a real environment where technological solutions and
innovations can be tested. The objective of Tarragona is to improve the quality of the

services provided to the people and at the same time to stimulate an innovative
environment in de city.
One of the proposals is to design an urban environment that makes easy to have
healthier lifestyles. The idea is to take profit of the Mediterranean culture and the sport
practice changing the paradigm of mobility.
Another proposal is to promote young people to have innovative ideas and to
incorporate technologies in the hospital and health environment.

Mobility
Mobility is in essence one of the most important issues in every city due to its impact
over the quality of life and in general over the quality of the environment.
Tarragona has worked on this issue. The city has encouraged people to use the public
transport and collective; and in the implication of the society in the decision making in
regard with mobility.
The Tarragona Smart Mediterranean City will be essential to achieve these objectives.
The project has two main goals. First of all, the efficient and integrated management of
the different aspects of mobility: parking, public transportations, individual mobility,
integration with other means of transport, etc.). The second goal is to allow the
interaction between this new management of mobility with other strategic components
for the city.
Some proposals to achieve these objectives are the reflection of data from sensors in
different aspects of mobility, the analysis of this data and other date such as demography
or the consumption and the development of optimization and evaluation systems.
Moreover, it is important to concentrate the management of the mobility in a centre of
control integrated, capable of provide services such as the exploitation of efficient
parking, public transportation and the traffic management. Another idea is the
calculation of the optimal trajectories for some public services such as the urban waste
collection.
Finally, it is important to develop and adopt solutions on environmental aspects such as
the local environmental impact of the mobility (new fuels, electric vehicles, hybrids,
etc.); or the promotion of behaviours that take into consideration responsible mobility.
Tourism and Heritage
Tarragona has been named world heritage for the UNESCO because of its roman
archaeology, which lives with a diversified cultural live. The tourism sector represents
one of the principal sectors in Tarragona in terms of economy and employment.

To promote the tourism activity in Tarragona there has been a development in social
networks, smart phone applications and websites. With these improvements, tourists
have more information on real time about restaurants, hotels, heritage, culture, etc.
The Mediterranean Games will represent a window for the tourism promotion towards
the rest of Mediterranean cities, making easier to collaborate with other cities in terms
of culture, sustainability and efficiency.

Benefits of smart solutions from other cities

I think that Tarragona needs to develop an infrastructure of public bicycles such as
BiciMad in Madrid.
I believe that this implementation will be very positive because the public transportation
in Tarragona is quite limited, due to the fact that the city is built on an historical city on
a hill, it has very narrow streets where means of transport such as the bus are unable to
access. As a solution, I think that public bikes will solve this problem due to their
versatility and because they are accessible to all the public.

Negative externalities
In my point of view, there are some negative externalities on this proposals and my have
some negative effects on Tarragona.
The most important is related with an excessive implication of the city to achieve this
objective of an smart city. My point is that due to the fact that the close date of the
Mediterranean Games, the city may be very focused on these policies and may lose the
attention of other important policies related with jobs, employment and tourism.
On the other hand, as I have mentioned previously the Games are a window to the rest
of the world. If the city becomes unable to manage the volume of visitors and fails, this
window of promotion would become a double edge sword and will harm the city if
something goes wrong.

Conclusions
I believe that in Tarragona, we have a great opportunity to improve and to become a
smart city. As I have mentioned several times, the Mediterranean Games are a great
excuse and an objective to make this transition towards this kind of green cities.
As a citizen, I am almost 100% that all the population will be kind to this change that
has started but needs to be finished for the next year. Moreover, it is not only an
opportunity to make a good impression during the Games but it is also essential for all
the tourism that comes to see our city and our beaches every year.
We have the opportunity to become a reference on this area, which is not only going to
benefit from tourism, but also will improve the health and quality of life culture of the
current citizens and habitants of Tarragona and its surroundings.

References
http://www.tarragona2017.cat/en/
https://www.youtube.com/user/tarragonasmart
http://www.smartcities.es/2014/10/21/smart-green-cities-tarragona/