Madrid, June 17, 2022.- Madrid’s public bus service, the EMT, was one of the protagonists of the Global Mobility Call developed between June 14 and 16 at 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 continuously. That’s why the city has taken its chances on data control through monitoring. This is the secret of the success of the EMT, which has already set a 100% Spanish monitoring system in full development for machinery and users.
The EMT counted on a system based on 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, reason why they were forced to change their IT infrastructure management.
The public company of transport 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 to all the interconnected technology and the agreement with Pandora FMS provided them with such a solution.
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 has more than 2,000 buses and that tens of thousands of users use this type of transport daily. To satisfy the high demand they relied on evolution to implement a monitoring system capable of adapting to the systems the EMT already had, but that were able to coexist with future evolutions”, 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 the control over the fleet increase, but the response capacity in the face of any incident does too and possible breakdowns can be prevented, which reduces the impact on the end user and maximizes the benefits.
“When this monitoring system was implemented in the EMT, so was the watchdog agent that reduces workload. What is achieved with this mechanism is that there is no need for periodic checkouts to see that the system is working properly and that, in the event of an error, it is possible to alert in time to act and prevent similar ones”, highlights Pandora FMS chairman.
EMT has now 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 become common, which allows greater connectivity and higher speed when using 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 know 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.