Barcelona's Growing Urban AI Ecosystem
Discovering the city's AI and supercomputing-powered approach to crafting a sustainable, livable urban future.
In the world of cutting-edge city planning, Barcelona stands out thanks to one of Europe’s premier supercomputing centers, solidifying its role in technological innovation and generating valuable scientific knowledge both regionally and globally.
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), a public research center located within the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) in the western part of the city, occupies the land within the beautifully preserved Torre Girona estate, established in the 19th century, surrounded by lush green spaces and a pond. This setting creates a juxtaposition with the site’s history as a thriving hub for trade, industry, and banking.
Since 2005, the BSC-CNS has housed the MareNostrum (Latin for “Our Sea”) supercomputer. In tune with the city’s reputation for stunning architecture, the MareNostrum 4 supercomputer housed within the chapel with its neo-classical architecture built in the 1940s was chosen as the most beautiful data centre in the world in 2017.
MareNostrum 5: A Supercomputing Powerhouse
Now in its fifth iteration, MareNostrum 5 was inaugurated in December 2023 and represents the pinnacle of high-performance computing in Spain. As part of the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking’s (EuroHPC JU) family of supercomputers, it plays a crucial role in advancing scientific research and achieving technological sovereignty for EU’s member states.
Occupying a space roughly the size of three tennis courts, it boasts a computing capacity equivalent to roughly 380,000 high-end laptops - this translates to an impressive 314,000 billion calculations per second. Its unique architecture combines classical computing with an accelerated partition specifically designed for artificial intelligence.
As of June 2024, MareNostrum 5 ranks among the world’s top supercomputers, holding the 8th position on the TOP500 list. And in addition to raw power, it’s also one of the greenest supercomputers - the BSC-CNS has implemented efficient cooling systems, renewable energy sources, and energy optimization strategies to minimize its environmental impact that ranks it #15 on the complementary GREEN500 list.
MareNostrum 5 plays a crucial role in Spain's national AI strategy, presented in 2020, driving advancements in fields like AI surrogates, digital twins, foundational models and LLMs, and image processing. These advancements have far-reaching implications for everything from drug development and medical research to climate modelling and urban planning, helping researchers tackle some of the world's most complex challenges.
Enabling Urban Innovation
The BSC-CNS plays a vital role in Barcelona’s city advancement, collaborating closely with the Barcelona Digital City initiative and its urban innovation arm.
Here are some examples of how the city has been helping shape the future of urban living:
Digital Twins of the City: Barcelona’s virtual replica, the first of its kind in Europe, marks an urban planning revolution. It allows simulations of various scenarios, modeling the impact of potential changes, like the installation of a new metro line or the effects of a heatwave on vulnerable populations. These digital twins are further enhanced by AI, powered by the BSC-CNS, enabling real-time tracking of air and noise pollution, distribution of goods, traffic management, and building energy use to better understand an incredibly complex urban system.
CALIOPE-Urban: This innovative air quality modelling tool, powered by the BSC-CNS's supercomputing capabilities, is designed to improve air quality management in urban areas by obtaining hourly maps of NO2 concentrations at the street level. By analyzing vast amounts of data, CALIOPE can pinpoint pollution hotspots and help policymakers implement targeted measures to improve air quality, which can significantly reduce respiratory illnesses and enhance citizens' overall health and well-being.
Sentilo: An open-source software that utilizes thousands of sensors installed in public spaces throughout the city to capture real-time data on various aspects, such as the flow of people, noise levels, temperature, and air quality in each neighbourhood. This data provides valuable insights into the city's dynamics, supplementing the information used to power AI-accelerated digital twins, and enabling more effective urban planning and resource management.
Mercè: This citizen science experiment conducted from May to November 2020, demonstrates the potential of combining human insights with AI. By involving citizens in training a machine learning algorithm to analyze evaluations of over 3000 streets, Mercè helps identify urban design patterns that contribute to a more livable city, such as the presence of trees, wide sidewalks, or urban furniture.
Evolving Digital Awareness in Urban Environments
As urban environments grow more complex, the demand for intelligent solutions is greater than ever. Urban AI is an emerging concept that’s an extension of the Smart City paradigm, helping cities navigate the challenges of the 21st century, and Barcelona is at the forefront of this revolution.
On July 20th, 2022, Barcelona, along with Amsterdam and London, presented the Global Observatory of Urban AI (GOUAI) at the Barcelona Urban Innovation Center. The GOUAI's Atlas of Urban AI serves as a global platform, providing a visual representation of how cities worldwide are using AI to address a wide range of challenges.
This initiative builds upon the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights (CCDR), also launched by Barcelona, along with Amsterdam and New York City in November 2018. The CCDR recognizes the growing importance of data in city operations and emphasizes the need for digital rights, ethical considerations, and secure infrastructure in the development and implementation of urban AI solutions.
The Emergence of Urban AI
The GOUAI’s first report, released in February 2024, provides valuable insights and highlights key challenges facing the development of Urban AI:
Urban AI has distinct political influence: Cities are complex ecosystems and prime testing grounds where AI interacts directly with millions of people’s lives, making them inherently political spaces. This reflects the origin of the word “politics” itself, which derives from the Greek word “politika,” meaning “affairs of the cities.” The abundance of data from concentrated human activity and advanced infrastructure in urban environments fuels machine learning initiatives, such as autonomous vehicles, robotics, city brains, and urban software agents.
However, to fully address the societal and environmental challenges faced by urban populations, Urban AI must prioritize a human-centric approach that goes beyond technological optimization and innovation. This means grounding its development in social and ethical considerations that recognize the broader impact on quality of life and inclusivity. Currently, the majority of Urban AI initiatives focus on governance and improving urban services.Ethical Considerations and Cultural Differences: The current map reveals an imbalance in Urban AI initiatives, with 80% concentrated in North America and Europe. This disparity likely reflects varying levels of political and fiscal autonomy among municipal governments, influencing their ability to promote open data and AI projects. Geographical barriers, language differences, and cultural disparities can create challenges for global collaboration and the development of inclusive ethical AI frameworks.
Addressing these disparities will be key to fostering international collaboration and inclusivity in AI-driven urban development. Developing adaptable ethical frameworks that respect regional diversity can help Urban AI initiatives bridge divides, ensuring equitable and effective deployment of these technologies.Balancing Security with Individual Data Privacy: While cities strive for security and digital resilience prompted by increased data accessibility, ethical considerations around data privacy make responsible deployment challenging - the GOUAI deliberately excludes the many controversial uses of facial recognition technologies worldwide.
For example, Latin America’s use of facial recognition technology, while seen as a solution to rising crime rates, raises concerns about its potential for abuse and discrimination. Implementing robust safeguards that find the right balance between AI-enhanced utility and individual rights is crucial.Sustainability needs more attention: While many implementations are thinking about transparency, privacy protection, fairness, digital safety and accountability, only 6% of Urban AI projects prioritize sustainability, highlighting a gap between the potential of AI to address environmental challenges and the recognition of its own environmental footprint.
Cities must recognize that AI can be both a contributor to and a solution for environmental problems, considering the energy consumption, e-waste generation, and resource extraction associated with AI technologies. A commitment to sustainability could also set a valuable precedent for the broader digital transformation of cities.Implementation is outpacing regulation: Urban AI solutions are rapidly emerging and encouragingly, implementation is not exclusive to large cities, with 66% of initiatives occurring in small to medium-sized cities. Cross-city collaborations, like Eurocities and C40 Cities, are instrumental for knowledge sharing and resource pooling.
However, there’s little due-diligence follow up on policies (12%) and strategies (6%) - only 11% of cities have specific AI strategies or action plans (Barcelona, Amsterdam, NYC, Buenos Aires, and Vienna), and just 21% have implemented local policies and regulations. This regulatory gap indicates that as Urban AI solutions are deployed at a rapid pace, cities may struggle to keep up with necessary legal frameworks and safeguards. Closing this governance gap will be crucial to achieving the full potential of Urban AI while managing risks.