PWC Master Class at the UPC: UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE CATALUNYA

Fulfilling the commitments that IPWCA assumed for 2017, we are collaborating with prestigious universities around the world.

Last week we were honored to teach a Master Class about Pneumatic Waste Collection at the MASTER: SMART CITIES: URBANISM, TECHNOLOGY AND SUSTAINABILITY imparted by the UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE CATALUNYA - UPC.

After a theoretical block, we did a workshop designing the PWC system and quantifying the environmental & resilience benefits for an area of Boston.

Great bunch of "Smart" participants and Thanks to Blanca Arellano, the Master’s Director.

About the Master…

A new urban paradigm has emerged over the last decade: THE SMART CITY. The traditional concepts of living, working and leisure, characteristic of rationalist urban planning, have been joined by a series of increasingly complex issues that mean that the role of the city has to be defined in a new way. Sustainability, social cohesion, governance, innovation and resilience to environmental changes, among others, are the factors that make up the city in the Information Age.

The emergence and spread of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has led to a fundamental change in the contemporary city, making the range of values conferring full citizenship - THE RIGHT TO THE CITY - available to society. With these new challenges to society, the traditional professions (architects, geographers, engineers, sociologists, etc.) have to consider how to adapt to the changes that the city is undergoing, and how to work in a multidisciplinary framework in terms of planning and managing the complexity that characterizes territory in the twenty-first century.

This postgraduate course arises from the evident need to prepare professionals linked to the planning and management of the city in terms of the innovation, participation, quality of life and sustainability that the ICTs can bring to the optimization of urban processes. The course aims to train specialists to become qualified to deal with an improved and more efficient use of resources, and in the development of innovative management tools based on "smart processes" that will help expand and enhance the knowledge of professionals working in local government, planning and management of Smart Cities.

The course features renowned professionals and experts in the field of research such as the participation of Professor Rudolf Giffinger of the Vienna University of Technology, who is leading the European Smart Cities project and the Planning for Energy Efficient Cities (PLEEC) project.