The public service of buses of Madrid, the EMT, was one of the protagonists of Global Mobility Call that took place the 14th and 16th of June in IFEMA. The company from Madrid exposed its future plans tracing the route to continue transforming the capital into a Smart City where sustainable mobility and independent vehicles acquire great relevance.
Nevertheless, executing this plan would be impossible without a technology characterized by generating data on a steady basis.
That’s why the city has taken its chances on data control through monitoring. This is the secret for the success of the EMT, that already has established a monitoring system thanks to Pandora FMS.
Pandora FMS, the great secret for Madrid’s EMT success
The EMT counted on a system based on a central HOST, that is to say, a computer or a set of computers around where all the information circulated and to which others connected.
But, after a remarkable enterprise growth, this system became ineffective before an activity that seemed uncoverable, the reason why they were forced to change their IT infrastructure management.
The public transport company confronted a remarkable technological growth of buses and users, and they set the goal of having a trustworthy control over the whole system, both the hardware and the processes that take place.
And it was there where monitoring came up, that is to say, the reception and analysis of data and their management by means of a central console.
In other words, the EMT needed a system that canalized all the information to a single computer from which to access all the interconnected technology, and the agreement with the Spanish company Pandora FMS made such a solution available to them.
Through the alliance, the regional public giant managed to reduce costs and improve its service until becoming a reference in public transport for the smart cities of the future, as it has been shown in the Global Mobility Call.
“The EMT needed to remarkably improve the management of all the information.
It must be taken into account that its fleet is made up of more than 2,000 buses and that tens of thousands of users use this type of transport daily.
To satisfy this high demand they leaned on evolution to implement a monitoring system able to adapt to the systems the EMT already had in motion, but that could be able to coexist with future developments”,
explains Sancho Lerena, CEO of Pandora FMS
This monitoring system allows, among other things, to improve the process of checking bus availability through applications, thanks to which the user can see how much is left before the bus arrives from their phones.
It also makes it easy for maintainers to manage with real-time information on each machine, its performance, and its status.
By means of Pandora FMS technological solution, not only does it increase the control that exists over the fleet, but it also achieves better response to any incident apart from preventing possible breakdowns, which reduces the impact on the end user and maximizes the benefits.
“When this monitoring system is implemented in the EMT, a watchdog agent is also established that reduces workload.
What is achieved with this mechanism is that there is no need to carry out periodic checkouts to see that the system is working correctly and that, in the event of an error, it can be alerted in time to act and prevent similar ones”,
highlights the head of Pandora FMS.
EMT Madrid now has control of each bus, which by means of LAN networks constantly dump information to the central.
A step that in just a few years will be left behind, since they intend to improve data management until knowing in real time the capacity in each bus or even establish some that are completely autonomous.
A series of innovations that are framed within the goal of smart cities, where the use of technology for the efficient development of services is the fundamental pillar.
The power of real-time data
Investment in technological development has only just begun.
In the coming years, the use of 5G will end up being established, which allows higher connectivity and higher speed in the use of this type of networks.
In turn, this scenario will increase the ability of systems to obtain data in real time. And, therefore, service management itself may be more efficient by having the option of adjusting to the behavior of users with a correct monitoring system.
Madrid, which has reaffirmed in the Global Mobility Call its image of smart city, is already working on creating a digital twin (a virtual recreation of the city) that allows us to find out the movement that takes place in the distribution of its logistic microhub.
That way, as with the other services, circulation can be anticipated and improved and, therefore, more efficient and sustainable mobility is achieved.
Pandora FMS’s editorial team is made up of a group of writers and IT professionals with one thing in common: their passion for computer system monitoring. Pandora FMS’s editorial team is made up of a group of writers and IT professionals with one thing in common: their passion for computer system monitoring.
