ESADE student selected as finalist in World Smart Cities Awards
DEA Drones, a project developed by Alfonso Zamarro (BBA ‘14), was selected as a finalist in the fourth edition of the World Smart Cities Awards and has just received the Adecco Award for the Brightest Young Idea. Mr. Zamarro’s initiative aims to create a rooftop drone network in Barcelona that would be able to respond to medical emergencies within three minutes.
The DEA Drones team saw the Smart City Expo World Congress as an opportunity to pitch their project and raise their profile in the smart cities sector. According to Mr. Zamarro, the medical service offered by DEA Drones would cover areas that are essential to creating smart cities. "We want to create a drone network that will help the city provide better service to residents, improve mobility (by being airborne), and optimise the city’s available resources," he explained.
The project’s proximity to residents is one of its greatest strengths in terms of helping Barcelona to become a smart city. "Before starting to design the service, we spent a lot of time identifying the real problems with Barcelona’s current emergency response service, how it works on the inside, and how it would work with our service," explained Mr. Zamorro. Although the initiative was initially designed for Barcelona, the problems that DEA Drones aims to solve are present in many parts of the world and, specifically, in every emergency response system. In designing the service, the team therefore considered the possibility of expansion to other emergency services and geographical areas.
Technology advances at a rapid pace. "DEA Drones is a technologically viable innovation in the short term," explained Mr. Zamorro. "We’ll see drones responding to emergencies within the next few years. This is a real, rapid opportunity for smart cities."
World Smart Cities Award
The World Smart Cities Award is a pioneering initiative that recognises bold projects and innovative initiatives that further the "smart city" concept anywhere in the world.
The award aims to foster the development of the cities of the future by improving quality of life, sustainability, innovation, creativity, competitiveness, and efficient management and administration. The World Smart Cities Award seeks out cities, projects, entrepreneurs, research centres, government agencies, NGOs and public-private consortiums that offer innovative visions and solutions for smart cities.
