Small and medium-sized companies can participate in the project. The call will be opened until next July 4th.

Through a project that seeks to achieve the concept of “Smart Island”, the Society of Economic Promotion of Gran Canarias (SPEGC) reported that the country is looking for technology companies that want to be part of the initiative. The call hopes to include different technology sectors, including Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and blockchain.

According to the announcement, the objective is to boost the tourism sector in the well-known Spanish islands, as well as boost the economic activity that the Covid-19 outbreak has reduced due to the crisis.

The agency explained that the project will work in sectors. Each participating company may suggest two proposals for the economic sector, and two others for the tourism sector. Once the proposals are selected, the agency will grant the company EUR 250,000 for each sector, which is a total of EUR 500,000 for both the economic and tourism sector. The reception of projects or proposals is already available and will close next July 4th.

Call for the Tourism Sector

The first call highlights the importance of tourism for the Canary Islands and hopes to boost the sector through the use of innovative technologies. The name of the project for the tourism sector is Gran Canaria Smart Tourist Destination. According to the call, the sector hopes to include technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Business Intelligence, Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, and Virtual Reality.

The main idea is to incorporate the aforementioned technological tools to conduct important analyzes that record and evaluate valuable data, such as the flow and behavior of tourists, the surveillance and preservation of tourist spaces, and the concentration of people in closed places, the latter as a health measure for the control of the Covid-19 outbreak.

The announcement explains that participating companies must meet certain legal requirements that allow them to create and maintain business with the state. Besides, although the project is aimed at small and medium-sized companies, the announcement detailed that, preferably, these participants should have connections with research centers.

Call for the Economic Sector Seeks to Improve Waste Management

Regarding the second call, it is known that it will be more focused on waste management, climate monitoring, safeguarding of public places, transport and mobility, as well as commercial and citizen activities.

For this sector, the call is to develop projects that include technologies such as Virtual Reality, Cybersecurity, Technology with Drones, Blockchain, IoT, Big Data, and Robotics.

Smardest will be the name of the general call that refers to the Smart Island project. Smardest will have as its main axis “promoting the destinations of the cooperation space to transform these territories into Smart Tourist Destinations (DTI)”. Furthermore, they SPEGC added that implementing systems that maintain sanitary measures against the Covid-19 it pandemic could serve for future similar contingencies in the future.

This suggests that the effort seeks to complement the measures of the Spanish government against the pandemic. Thus, the so-called health passport will be enabled for next April.

By María Rodríguez

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