Digital neurons that improve the environment | Digitization | Technology

In the mind of a child shine, like luminaries, more than a thousand billion neurons. There is an infinitesimal jump, a spark of life from neuron to neuron, the synapse, which is repeated in such enormous numbers to configure the thought of an individual. In just two decades, that figure (approximately half in adults) will have to be multiplied by 9,700 million inhabitants. To those billions of minds we must add the billions of devices that display their own capacity, whether they want to call it intelligence or not, through technology.

Dinapsis, the great digital transformation project of Agbar, an expert in the comprehensive management of the water cycle in Spain that provides service to 12 million people in more than a thousand municipalities, proposes the fusion of both extremes, the human and the digital, through an agenda of initiatives centralized in hubs technological. “Since the hubs at Dinapsis we develop new solutions that combine expert knowledge with new digital technologies, seeking to optimize environmental management. This combination is what we call operational intelligence”, explains Guillermo Pascual, Director of Operations and Digital Transformation at Agbar.

The objectives of the centers currently active in Spain, although with their specialties in each case, point in the same direction: scaling up and adapting digital needs around the sustainable management of water, the environment and environmental health, facilitating optimal resource management. “Dinapsis’ work is aimed at achieving more efficient and circular management of municipalities, thus guaranteeing sustainable growth. We have more than 30 digital solutions to respond to the needs of cities and territories”, Pascual details. These solutions arise from active collaboration between all sectors of society: citizens, the public and the private are cited in the hubs of Dinapsis to find alternatives to the various problems posed by the present.

Strategy in three axes

The Dinapsis strategy is a trident open to both fronts. In the first place, water, the management pillar of the group. Dynapsis for water focuses on obtaining digital solutions that optimize the management of the water cycle 24×7; that is, in real time. Secondly, the city, that urban entity in which 70% of the world population will live in 2050. Dynapsis for city it seeks to be the city’s engine and thermometer at the same time: on the one hand, it promotes technological solutions that accelerate and improve the ecological transition of municipalities through more efficient management of operations and resources and, on the other, it offers constant monitoring that estimates how healthy a metropolis is at all times.

Citizens demand that sustainable models be applied, not only for consumption, but also for production and resource management

William Pascual. Director of Operations and Digital Transformation of Agbar

The last axis Dynapsis for Circular Economy, It connects with one of the great trends of the present and future. Circular economy is understood as a massive change in our entire socioeconomic model so that what we consume is born from something already previously consumed. That is, to reuse, in the most ingenious way, the residues of an economic activity to turn them into the products of another. “At Agbar we work so that the circular economy model definitively replaces the linear economy model, which overconsumes resources. Applying innovative digital models to achieve more efficient management is essential in this process”, explains Pascual. There are curious examples in different sectors, from shoes that start from old tires to a new material that aims to replace plastics and is made from greenhouse gases. The regeneration of water in treatment plants for new uses, such as irrigation, is another example of this search for efficiency.

meeting point

The meeting between all sectors of society is the key to these technology centers. But the tools from which they are nourished to endow this creativity with resources are the most advanced: the internet of things, digital twins, the big Data, artificial intelligence, the computer vision or the machine learning that, together with the advanced knowledge of the operation, are just some of the ingredients of the cocktail that Agbar has macerated for its digitalization and that, in unison, enriches its Dinapsis centers to find that spark of innovation. And that spark is born, it is demanded, from within the very society that wants not to dream but to plant itself in a future that is greener and more prosperous than the present: “Citizens increasingly demand that sustainable models be applied, not only to consumption, but also for production and resource management. The concern to guarantee that we can have essential resources is now something generalized and, both administrations and companies, we have a duty to meet these expectations”, concludes Pascual.