Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: The City the Baba Podcast where we bring together top actors in the smart city arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations.
I am your host Tamlin Shimizu and I hope you will enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
Smart in the City is brought to you by Babel Smart Cities. We enable processes from research and strategy development to co creation and implementation. To learn more about us, please visit the Babel platform at babel-smartcities eu.
So in today's episode we're heading to the sunny Atlantic coast of Portugal. So of course I'm talking about the municipality of Cascais. It's a city that's been become a reference for smart city innovation, citizen participation and digital leadership.
If you missed a previous episode, by the way, I spoke with Qashqai's Ambiente before and I also recommend you to take a take a listen to that episode.
Now, without further ado, I'd love to introduce you to our guest today. Joining me is none other than Isaac Silvera. He's the Municipal Director of the Department of Communication Technology and Image at at Cascais in Portugal. Welcome Isaac.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Thank you for the invitation. Hello everybody. It's really a sunny day in Cascais.
We are really happy to share some things that we do with a lot of pleasure in Cascai. So let's go.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks so much for coming on.
I really love Qashqai. I was just telling you before this that I've been once and I would love to come back and I sold dolphins. I was there. So it's a really beautiful place.
So I highly recommend it for, for everyone.
But yeah, really interested to learn from you also about all the different projects and initiatives that are going on in this city.
So before we get into the interview and learn more about you and your work and all those initiatives and projects, I like to get started with a little bit of a warm up question.
And so the warm up question I have for you is is if Qashqai were an animal, which animal would it be?
[00:02:40] Speaker A: That's a nice question.
Let me think a little bit. I think it will be a mix between a lion and a dolphin.
A dolphin because for sure in Cascais, the sea and the ocean is the place where we can watch every day and an animal that takes together the environment with people, with friendship and to be nice to those who visit us.
Lion because we want to be the ones we want to be the leaders.
We want to.
I can see better. We know our place and our place is the reference not only in our country, but also to Europe and to the world. We want to be leaders in innovation and modern innovation to take care of people.
We really believe that everything start with people. And if we think on it or learn them, we will be winners.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I really like that. And I also have a funny image in my head of like a dolphin tail with a lion head.
So quite the combo of animals also that I'm picturing for catch. Guys.
Isaac, I want to know a little bit more about you now as well. What is your background? How did you come into your role today? And also speak a little bit about what your role really entails.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Okay, I have a strange path until arrive to Cascais. Okay, I born in Cascais and I live in Cascais for.
Since I was born. But during 25 years I was working in Portuguese Navy. I'm a navy officer. I graduated in a mechanical engineer. And my job was. Was always related with sea, but in a national way. So I'm responsible for the maintenance of our submarines. I'm a passion for sea and I always saw my mission as not related directly with war, but with defense, with protect our areas. And I remember a vision from the Navy that became our sea. Safe to be lived. So the idea is if we protect our sea, it's possible to live and trade on it. So it's impossible to. To don't protect our seas. Not only and sustainably, that I also do it in my volunteer project that I have so other part of my life.
My life I have three pillars. It's family, work and volunteer. And I really. I really don't imagine my life with. With one of those. Those pillars. So I was in the Navy for 25 years and I was called to. To Cascais, to the municipality with a mission is to try to organize and inspire people in some areas, like smart cities, like human resources, like communication, also with technology.
And so I'm here working in the municipality since last year. And during those 18 months I'm really pleased to work in my city in my hometown. So I'm inspired every day. I say to my team every day that I'm really pleased and warm with this work that I do every day.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Really interesting background. I always say that the. This is part of. One of my favorite parts of the podcast is just learning about everyone's stories and journeys because it's. It's almost never linear. It never makes like Complete sense. But that's how life is and that's the journey that led you here today. So I love it.
Can you paint us a bit more of a picture of cash case? I actually have a. I think most people have a pretty good image of it now with that dolphin lion metaphor and that is by the ocean etc. But let us know also what is really the unique DNA that makes up Qashqais from your perspective.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: Okay, I can say that.
And using a little bit of the smart city idea. For us, a smart city is not only a concept. We really leave this concept as an idea of living.
For us, a smart city is not a technology thing. It's a human city. We use technology not as a destination but as a way to go to people day by day living. So we are always looking into sea but thinking in people. How can they live every day? How can they. They work and study in Cascais never forget, never forgetting the people that visit us that it's really important for us these three, three ideas of people that live in Cascais, work or study and those who visit Cascais and the DNA of Cascais always be in front of. So we try to.
I will say to you that we have a concept that it's DNA that we use to support new companies and projects that arrives to Cascais. That we have like a project it's called really DNA that it's to improve and to give power to companies and projects that arrives to Cascais. And I think we leave it every day. So the concept of smart city, I remember some words of our president that he says one of the biggest project of smart cities is the place where people can.
I'm not to remember the word in English, but then cultivate fruits in a city. So we have community places where people can plant fruits and other products inside of the city. And we have that. And I compliment the president saying that we have that in our.
So it's referenced in a technology place where we can manage that to achieve to everybody. Not only in places where we can think that it's important we look into the territory and we can choose the places correctly to achieve to every one of our citizens.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: I like this thought of really cultivating fruit or cultivating the impact that we want to have within our cities.
Can you talk a little bit more about your smart city strategy? Then how is that actually implemented in practice?
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Okay, I can say that I was telling a little bit.
For us, being a smart city means being a human city where the technology is not the end but like a tool to serve our citizens and people live, work or study here. We try with that to anticipate the needs and manage the complexity of the problems every day. So we're using that data, digital tools and also the innovation to improve the quality of life of of our community.
At the same time we believe in co creation. So not only what we think, but using the ideas of people who live here.
We believe that it's important to have a real time intelligence to achieve to the citizens.
That's why our Smart City strategy is fully integrated with the governance, environmental mobility into as I told before, citizen participation. It's something that's really a part of Cascais. As I told you also for us being a smart city is not a project. It's even inside of our blood. It's a culture and we are every day working in how can we improve our strategy with the feedback of our citizens.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Yeah, that is the brilliant thing about Smart City because you really need whether it's smart, whether you call it smart city or not. You need some kind of cross cutting implementation strategy that goes across the different silos within government.
And it sounds like you're really doing that well.
You had mentioned to us this Qashqai operations center.
Can you talk a little bit more about this? This sounds like a more daily implemented center. How does it work? What makes it unique? How is it changing these day to day operations?
[00:12:22] Speaker A: I think Cascais operations center has other project that we have like GEO Qashqais and I can can speak a little bit about this later.
It's in a short sentence. It's the digital and operational brain of Cascais in a place that is in Sturil right A couple of minutes from where I am.
It's a place where we have a team of workers from Cascais where we can integrate data in real time for mobility systems, environmental sensors, public safety feeds. People can give feedback to the municipality and we integrate with sensors and also with the infrastructure network so receive information for more than 1,000 performance indicators.
That indicators feeds our business intelligence system that we call Cascais BI and supporting with evidence based governance we can take decisions in that way. We can respond with anticipation to crisis. We can optimize service delivery every day like mobility transportation. We can check where where the where our public service are working and to take some decisions in order to anticipate problems or to solve solve problems. We are not only prepared for crisis but for example, I don't know if you have the idea we have really big events in Cascais. Like for example, last two weeks we had the Festus Dumars that it's Sea Festival, where we have during eight days very big concerts in the Cascais Bay with more than 20, 30,000 people together. And we had to to monetize all the systems to give a proper response to them. So because of the traffic, of the use of public transportation, even for the cleaning of everything after midnight, when the parties stop, after that we change traffic and we clean everything. Next morning, everything is prepared for another day of concerts, for another day of visiting people that want to be in the center of the city. And we can follow everything in our operational center. We are developing some tools to be possible to do it in other places. But that place we have a team prepared for that, that of course can be moved for another place. And we are every day trying to improve the way to receive feedback from people. We have the phone number of Cascais where people can call whenever they want, just to say, to give some feedback about service, about problems, about the traffic, mobility and everything like that.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Sounds like a good approach, especially when you're managing very big events and things along those lines. I want to hone a little bit more into what you mentioned before on really this citizen centric approach.
So what does citizen centric innovation really look like? I mean, you mentioned a couple examples with the operations center, but maybe you can dig in a bit deeper there.
What does that innovation, when we really put the citizen at the forefront, look like?
[00:16:24] Speaker A: For us, it's really important for us, the citizen interaction.
We always try to be as close as possible to our citizens. And this technology part is just a way to be more close. And with some support of technology, we can do it in a professional way without losing the direct contact.
We are, as I said in the beginning, we are finishing one of our projects that is CRM, that it's a customer relationship management system. So in all the ways that we contact with people can be by phone, can be by mail, can be by in a personal way in our Cascai stores, as told, we have four different places in Cascais where people can go by their feet or by transports and visit our team to, to check, to check some question that they have with the municipality, can be related to the. To the houses, can be with the traffic, can be with the mobility or something that they want to take care about Social Security, finance or something like that. We give a response. And this idea of customized relationship, it's really important for us because we Have a commitment with excellent in service. So not only with 215,000 residents in Cascais, but also with everyone who works, studies or visit Cascais. We really want that people feel that Cascais is a territory municipality that knows each one of them respect their time and try to anticipate their needs.
So this is not a digital transformation with really believe. We really believe that is a relationship transformation in trust building. So we believe that if people trust in our service, we are building something together.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: I. I like that perspective a lot. I've never heard, I don't think a city referred to as relationship transformation.
I like the idea of actually listening and treating citizens like they are actually a customer, but in a. In a good sense, like you're really building relationship and trust in.
In a. In a way that they're going to want to. Like they would want to come back and buy your product if you were selling it. Even you're. You're selling essentially your services as a.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: City in the way of living. Imagine that last time that you were in Cascais you had the need to check something with your ID or the mobility in Cascais. In the next time that we visit, that you will visit Cascais, you will be known as Tamlin. That was here not in an intrusive way, but something that we know that you like. So in the way.
And you feel like you are at home, even if you are visiting or working.
I can tell you something, a short story. We have a university, Nova Business School in Kirkavelos. And we are receiving more or less 2,000 new students every six months.
And one of the things that they want, they need is the place to live. How can they move in the municipality and what service do. Do they have? We have like a protocol with the university to have something, someone from Cascais there to receive all the. The aspects from them. And after this first meeting they. They belong to Cascai. So during six months they can use the transports, they can. They can use the service. And we know what they want. So we are always trying to.
I think the purpose is to people that visit Cascais feel that they are at home.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I fully expect you to send some dolphins my way next time I come. Now you've, you know, Cashkeys has kind of set that bar for me since I saw it the first time. So now you know what I. What I want for my next visit too. So.
Amazing. So I mean, you touched on it. There is a lot of tourism coming to Cascais. A Lot of visitors.
There's also. I mean, it's a coastal city, there's environmental pressures.
So I want to ask you what kind of solutions that you're using to really support resilience and sustainability.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: Well, as I told you, tourism and tourists and visitors are part of us. So the idea is to get.
Manage those things with our citizens. And we try hard to do it not only with the cohabitation between tourism and people. For example, in big events we try to always to protect and anticipate with people that live in a place to give some information about the events or something that happened.
We change traffic to don't. To not permit that tourists can go everywhere within their cars or buses to stop the traffic. That the people that live and work here. So we create special area for them. And for example, in big events we give a communication dedicated to the people that live in those areas to understand the schedules and sometimes to invite them to the events, because they need to feel the good part of the event. Imagine that in front of your house you have a concert that it's paid. But Temly cannot go to the. To the concert because he was not invited. So we invite people that live next to the events to participate in the events. And every time that we have big events, we prepare the communication that it's an important part from my side. And it's like a goal from the board of Qashqai, from the president and vice president to achieve to each one of the people that will have something that will change a little bit the life. And to invite them and to inform that during those days. And sometimes we really use the word to say sorry because it's the. To managing tourism with people. It's like sometimes it's magic. We have really to. To think not only in tourism, but the people who live with those parts. But in the end, everybody knows that those part of economic side is important for developing of Cascais. We have a business model that includes tourism. We have a tax for tourism in order to accommodate the small problems that we have with tourism. And we have. It's not really a department. It's okay, but you can say it's a department for tourism. Tourism that works with all the service of the municipality to try to integrate that with the daily life of people that live in Cascais.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: I'm getting a strong urge to want to move to Cascais while you're speaking. Speaking at some point in my life. So it's my goal.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: That's my goal. Interview not. Not only with You, Tamlin, but also with people that will listen this, this podcast and okay, no, I have my name, I have my, my, my job in Kishkai. So they will, if, if, if it's not true what I'm saying, they will try to find me, but I'm completely conscious about that. And for sure.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: I think there will at least be a few people looking up like apartment prices and stuff in the region after this.
I want to ask you about a project, Geocache, which from my understanding is a platform both used for internal planning and public services.
So can you tell us a little bit more about how it's being used and how you get citizens to actually engage in it?
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Okay, I will try to explain in a short way.
First of all, Jokerskay is really proud for Cascais and for sure for me because we made several changes last year to be in an open source platform. So it's quite easy to change and to make some evolutions.
I can say that Zhokos Kai, it's like our Geospatial, how can I say Library. So everything that we have in Cascais, we take the position in put there and we can, we can speak about houses, services, trees, lamps, garbage, places, everything is there. And for example, when we, when, when you tell me, visit again Cascais and try to find a place to live. You can. Or buy a house and then you can check in this platform with the owner of.
Of that. That place, because it's written there and you can check everything that is foreseen to construct in an area.
So it's possible if you use it in a complete way and is not for technician, it's for everybody. So it's. You can, you can look into and you can, you can look into it and you can choose the way that you. That you see the territory and imagine telling you are trying to. You want to build a house and you contract some like an architect to make a house and you have a project, you can go to the service of Cascais with the project and then can test in the territory how it will be near the other houses. So you can imagine that you want to build a house of 7, 7, 15, 20 meters in the middle of the city. You put the project and you can see even the shadow during the winter, during the summer, during the morning, during the afternoon. And they will say to you, it's Tamlin, it's not possible to build that house because the area of construction in that. So it's everything, it's very, very clean.
So it's not something that it's special. That part is not special for you. It will be special for the people that will live near you. So.
And we can also put the so in that platform. You can like dive into the city and we'll have pictures for every place in Cascaris. Not like Google Maps from some years, every year. And you can check the difference between 2024. We are finishing the picture from 2025 in all the municipality and check the difference between 2024 and 2020 and you can see how the city is increasing or decreasing or the new green spaces. So it's really.
I think we'll need a complete podcast to speak about jorgenskitefoots. It's a place where we can put everything that we want to record and people want to find. So.
Yeah, it's a library, a living library. Because every day it's with new information and in a way that you can see a map, pictures, and also 3D projects that we want to implement in Cascais.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. I really believe that information is truly empowers citizens in cities. I love initiatives that really put the information very easily in people's hands so they don't have to, you know, call a bunch of departments trying to figure out different information that they need to collect and just making lives more convenient in that way too. So really like that.
I have to ask you a bit about kind of your governance and how you deal with silos. Because of course, this is one of the biggest issues that most cities have is with a lot of these projects and initiatives, you need to coordinate across different departments, things along those lines. How, from your experience, how do you do this without it becoming fragmented?
[00:30:15] Speaker A: I think that is one of my important jobs in my position because I have a lot of area, a lot of areas like communication, but also the human resources and the idea of managing this city. That is, as I told you, with 215,000 people every day, working or living, we have like a group of people that talk each other every day and try to involve all the teams in a project. So if you, if you want to make an event or if you want to, to create a project, we check all the areas and we. In a couple of days we'll get a meeting with you and start with all, all the departments together. It's not easy to enter in Cascais in one department and then I have to pass to the other. So even our Cascais phone number, if you call to them, they will try to understand, to Understand what areas are involved in your question and they put them together. So it's really hard to split us.
It's one of my jobs to get people connected.
As I normal say, I make the connection between all the departments can be in communication, can be in human resources, can be in events or the areas like sustainability, environmental, health, social part. It is one, one part that's really important for. For. For Cascais because we are always in the front line. But we have a vision that or a goal that we don't want to leave no one behind. So we are always go further but trying. Trying or don't let. Don't let no one behind.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: Yeah, very important.
I also want to ask you how you're measuring impact in some of these projects because of course some there's a lot of different digital platforms around a lot of different cities, dashboards, all of these things. How do you really measure the impact of those?
[00:32:40] Speaker A: That is a very good question.
We try to do it with our business intelligence platform. So it's a place where a team that collect that data contacts all the departments in all the areas to in a simple way to measure all the things. So imagine the project of health. They have a department, I have people in the data team that contacts social and create with them a dashboard with all the projects and all the impacts. And we sometimes with support of consulting companies, we try to fight find what are the indicators and the measures to receive and then do it in an easy way.
When we start this data project we felt some resistance from the people because some of them write in a paper, some of them used an Excel file and it's not easy to collect all the data in that way.
And after.
When I was with the data team I told them my idea is simple. We will check all the departments and try to schedule a friend meeting with them and try to say to them how can we help them with the collection of data? The data belongs to them, not from our side. We just organize. And after those I think were more than 18 or 19 meetings. It was wonderful to feel that the teams felt the support from data data team and not some, some. Some people that want to pursue them or to try to. To get the data.
Nowadays we have more than 170 dashboards from all the areas that we can decide is very transparency. People can see other areas and we have data from the decision point of view, technical point of view. And then when the data is really structured, we publish that data to all the citizens. So you can go to our website and find QASHQAIS data and you can discover a lot of data from Cascais that you can use just for curiosity or for studies for the university, or a paper that you want to work. If you want to. To know where is base the knowledge, where are the health, health projects, social projects, the. The. And all the things that we do. You can find in Cascade that it's a public service that we have shared in our website.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: I really like that also, not just from the citizen centric, of course, that you mentioned, but also because I think it's so important that other cities also have access to the data so you can learn from each other. I think that's also something that often gets overlooked, is that if cities are sharing more openly where they're at different projects that they've implemented, that other cities can also learn from that better. Um, so really like that approach.
I just want to ask you, you're doing a lot of really good things, but I. I wonder where you think the main challenge still remains for your city.
What and what tools do you really need, do you think, to accelerate what you're doing even more?
[00:36:31] Speaker A: Well, we are not perfect and we know and we measure every day what things that we can do it better.
But in this moment we are really excited about the future because we detect things that we have to make better.
We feel that we are not slowing down, quite the opposite. And even in the project that I explained a little bit before, for us, involving the operations center with the digital twin, so predict what will be in the future is something that we want to do it in the. In the future.
The CRM project is something that we are working really fast to finish until the end of 2025.
And despite we could achieve in the past, public transport for free for the municipality, we want to do it more clean, more sustainable and improve the international collaboration.
We really believe that smart cities, as you told before this question, we should not be island. We don't want to be the only smart city in the world or in Portugal. So we are always trying to find and to strengthen international collaboration with other cities, not only with Europe, but also in our friends from native countries that speak Portuguese.
And we try to be like an example, but also to. To learn with those cities. Yesterday I was in a meeting with our smart city team and I told him that when they. When cities visit our operational center and also the city, I would like not only to explain what we do in Cascais, but to receive. To receive information, to receive feedback from the other cities, because I really believe that Talking each other will be. You'll be stronger both sides. So that is, I think one of the challenge for every city is to, to.
To know what the other cities and territories are making to. To. To be more positive to. To grow in the. In the future.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So important I've seen, of course that's a big part of what we do, is trying to share these learnings across borders, etc. So obviously place huge importance on that. So I can see that as a big accelerator and tool for change.
With that, I move on from our main interview part and we just go into our segment of today.
The segment that we have for you today is called Top or Flop.
Top or Flop. Respond quickly with your positive or negative review on a variety of of topics.
And don't worry at the end you can explain your answer if you need. You just have to make a, a fast.
A fast answer. And then we can go at the end.
Are you ready to play?
[00:40:04] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: Okay, let's do it.
Okay. Digital twin for Qashqai Citywide free public WI fi gamification for citizen engagement.
Facial recognition in urban security.
Using TikTok for city communications.
Coastal drone surveillance for environmental monitoring.
Good. Do you want to explain any of your answers?
[00:40:56] Speaker A: Yes, I'll try to explain. Okay. For us, the security of our territory, it's really important at this moment.
We really feel that we have a, a secure Cascais for people that, that, that lives or visit Cascais. But we are facing some, some challenge that we, we want to anticipate. So we are, we are planning some, some cameras for, for cash guys in the next months. But we are really strict with the idea that we just want to use it for anticipate some, some problems, not to control people. We really feel that people should be free in our, in Cascais in our territory. But they, but for being free, they have to be to be secure to receive people from more than 100 different nationalities and for, from those nationalities that for us when they arrived there, Cascais, they belong to Cascais, but they have different experience and we have to be clear that Cascais is free for everybody. So I admit that we have to have some ways to control and to surveil the territory, but we have to be very strict with those kind of information.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
Now we come to our final question. It's a question I ask every single guest that comes onto the podcast and it is to you, what is a smart city?
[00:42:40] Speaker A: Okay, that is. That is really a nice A nice question.
As I tried to explain, Smart is like to get more answers to the problems, not really a question of technology.
When I think in a smart city, especially looking to the future, I think I can think in a sentence. It's smart with a soul. So it's not in a technology way, but from our heart, from inside of us. So Isaac and Cascais, we want to be digitally intelligent, but also socially inclusive. And one of the things that is really important for us, it's environmental resilience. So we need to use Cascais, thinking that our children in the future will be possible to use it also, and especially with more quality than today. So when I look into the past in 10 years ago, Cascais was really developed for that time. And after 10 years we feel that we are always trying to be better. And when I see platforms like all the trees mapped into the territory and we can check what kind of maintenance did the trees have in the last times.
So the idea is to look into next 10 years and feel that people, even if we are a little bit more, a little bit less, they can use this, this land, this city in a better way than. Than we can use it today.
[00:44:48] Speaker B: I love the Smart with a soul. We're just gonna leave it on that note because I think that's a brilliant way to leave this episode and really explains well everything that you talked about today. So smart with a soul. Love it. Thank you so much for coming on, Isaac. I really appreciated your perspective, perspective and getting the chance to know you. So thanks so much.
[00:45:08] Speaker A: Thank you, Tamlin. And thank you all for listening to visit Cascais.
[00:45:12] Speaker B: Yeah, of course. And hopefully next time just see you in Cascais in person in my next visit.
[00:45:18] Speaker A: So I will not forget the dolphins.
[00:45:21] Speaker B: Great. Amazing. Glad I have someone on my side there.
And of course thank you to all of our listeners. This doesn't happen without you either. So don't forget you can always create a free free account on Baba SmartCities EU. You can find out more about smart city projects, solutions and more. Thank you very much.
Thank you all for listening. I'll see you at the next stop on the journey to a better urban life.
[00:45:59] Speaker A: It.
