The MERIT Project at the Smart City Expo World Congress 2024

The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech (UPC), represented by the UPC Technology Center (CIT UPC), participated actively in the Smart City Expo World Congress 2024 (SCEWC24), the world’s biggest and most influential event on urban innovation, held from 5 to 7 November in Barcelona. This year’s edition attracted over 25,000 attendees, with 1,150 exhibitors, 632 speakers, and 261 sessions.

Among the UPC’s showcased projects, the MERIT project gained significant attention alongside other pioneering solutions. At the UPC stand, representatives from CIT UPC distributed MERIT leaflets, drawing the interest of students and industry professionals eager to learn more about MERIT’s mission and study programmes. MERIT was exhibited together with other UPC initiatives and technologies at the congress, aligning with the University’s focus on driving smart city innovation through advanced research and collaboration. In this context, MERIT’s primary goal is to advance digital skills through the development of a pan-European educational ecosystem and a new industry-driven master’s programme focused on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and IoT, aimed at bridging the digital skills gap among specialists in Europe.

The UPC stand displayed cutting-edge prototypes and solutions across various sectors, particularly in AI and IoT. Highlights included USEFUL, an AI-powered vehicle for autonomous driving data collection; MELOA, low-power drifters to enhance sea observation and monitoring; eBRT2030, Europe’s next generation of sustainable, fully electric buses. Other projects include 6G-EWOC, AI and 6G technologies for safe, interconnected mobility; MASANOM, Mobile acoustic sensors to create automatic urban noise maps; DISCOVER, AI and robotics-based solution to promote circularity in construction, and INDUSAC, a methodology and a platform to strengthen industry-academia collaboration.

To learn more about MERIT’s project visibility and other UPC projects presented by the UPC at SCEWC24, visit this link.