The city received Bright Cities’ smart roadmap, which improves public services and the local quality of life
The city of Juazeiro do Norte, in Ceará, is the new Brazilian city to receive the smart roadpmap developed by Bright Cities. After months of studies and analysis on its main indicators, our platform outlined a complete diagnosis of its urban performance and pointed out dozens of smart solutions to transform it into a smart city.
In times of health and economic crisis, having accurate data about the performance of public services is essential for understanding where – and how – a city can do better. It is no coincidence that more and more city managers are betting on the concept of smart cities, since their intelligence consists in using data as raw material to trace analyzes, design solutions, anticipate problems and evaluate the performance of each public decision.
“Today, for the city to become intelligent, it’s important to think about improving the quality of life of the people who live in it. This city seeks the best coexistence between society, the public sector and the private sector, with intelligent citizens who participate, who give their opinion and suggest new solutions and ideas”, says Michel Araújo, Secretary of Economic Development and Innovation of Juazeiro do Norte (SEDECI).
With an innovative methodology, Bright Cities platform helped Juazeiro do Norte to achieve these objectives: “The tool gave us a better data management, allowing us to work with a direction”, adds Michel Araújo. In the diagnosis, 128 indicators were used to evaluate ten areas of its urban performance: Governance, Education, Health, Urbanism, Environment, Security, Mobility, Entrepreneurship and Technology and Innovation.
Through an algorithm that analyzes the data obtained, Bright Cities platform gives a note for each area and points out which of them should be improved. It is also from these evaluations that we are able to draw comparisons with cities in the country and abroad, including cases of benchmarking that may become possible references for the analyzed municipality.
According to Jerônimo Freire, Executive Secretary for Economic Development and Innovation, the data collection was fundamental for the city’s urban planning work: “The platform brings objective data, a better idea of what we need to improve and analyzes what has already worked. We are able to work with more accurate information, which gives us more transparency for communication with the population and allows a more integrated and cohesive action with other departments”, he says.
In Juazeiro do Norte’s analysis, our diagnosis showed that some of the greatest areas are Health and Energy. Among the indicators with positive results are “Average Life Expectancy”, “Response time for the fire brigade since the initial call”, “Percentage of the population with authorized electric service” and “Percentage of the total energy from sources renewable”. The analysis also pointed out that crime rates in the municipality have been falling, with a drop in violent crimes over the last couple years, and 10% in sexual crimes during the same period – data that indicate the progress in policies adopted by Juazeiro do Norte.
It is also important to highlight that many of the 160 indicators adopted by the Bright Cities platform (128 of them applied in Juazeiro do Norte) are related to the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Among them are the SDG 3 – Health and Well-Being and SDG 7 – Clean and Accessible Energy, indicating that Juazeiro do Norte is already aligned with the main global goals established by the UN!
In addition to the diagnosis, Bright Cities services include a complete analisys of the budget, urgency and scale of Juazeiro do Norte to create an exclusive roadmap to its needs. In it, we map and indicate which possible solutions could help the public management to face urban challenges and problems. For Juazeiro do Norte, we found 110 viable solutions to make the city smarter.
The areas in which we identified opportunities for improvement were Environment, Entrepreneurship and Sanitation. To guarantee innovation and efficiency in these sectors, we identified solutions such as the Septic Tank Biogestora, a simplified sewage treatment system suitable for domestic use in rural properties and which can also produce organic fertilizer through the process of biodigestion.
Another solution was the Redzone Map, which uses reliable government data to determine the fastest and safest routes to a destination. Another technology mapped and indicated by the platform was the Google Classroom, a tool aimed at remote education which has been of great use during the pandemic.
It is through initiatives like these, evaluated and suggested by Bright Cities, that cities can become increasingly intelligent. Juazeiro do Norte, for instance, has already carried out several actions towards the smart city area. In June 2018, the city approved the first Technology Master Plan for Smart Cities in Brazil, earning the 2019 Smart City Day Award. The secretary of Economic Development and Innovation of Juazeiro do Norte (SEDECI), Michel Araújo, presented the partnership with Bright Cities during the panel City Possible Tech Talk Citizen – Centric Communities, held during Smart City Expo World Congress 2019.
Bright Cities‘ contribution to cities is to precisely consolidate all advances and results on one same platform, creating a unified, safe and efficient way of visualization and access. Doing so, we enhance the work of municipal management by making content available with an attractive design, consolidating the results of years of research and allowing government officials to monitor the impact of their policies over time.
“The roapmap gave us a very accurate vision of management, showing us results and comparisons with other cities in the world so that we can see where we are and what path we can take. By making comparisions to several municipalities, it gaves us a direction and helped our policies based on data”, says Michel Araújo.
Bright Cities‘ roadmaps serve also as guides for future policies. Our platform provides access to the world’s largest database of smart solutions, with an exclusive methodology capable of relating them to the city’s data and demands.
We congratulate Juazeiro do Norte for the effort to gather data and adopt the platform, encouraging more Brazilian cities to become smarter! Do you want to know how your city can become one too? Learn more about Bright Cities and how our technology can help you get there here.
