The Environment, Green Technology and Engineering International Conference (EGTEIC):
The welcoming reception was in the Generala building on the old part of the Cáceres city on Wednesday June 18th in the afternoon. The other two days of the meeting was in the School of Technology (Escuela Politécnica) in the Cáceres campus.
The following speech was made by the Director of the School of Technology in the inaugural session of welcoming to participants from many different countries in the meeting:
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Good evening everyone and welcome to the city of dragons. Yes, I have said 'city of dragons' and there are two reasons for that: The first one is that the patron saint of Caceres, Saint George, as said the legend, he was the one who beat the dragon. The second one, is because part of the seventh and final season (at the moment) of the famous series Game of Thrones, was filmed in our city.
I am here in this welcoming committee for two reasons that I want to share with you: The first and the most important one is because my friend and colleage Santi Fernández who has organized this magnificent congress. The second one is that I’m the Director of the School of Technology of Cáceres.
The University of Extremadura is the only one in the vast territory of Cáceres and Badajoz. It serves up to around one million of inhabitans and has four campuses situated in the four bigger cities of both provinces. In these four campuses we have 17 centers.
The School of Technology, Escuela Politécnica in Spanish, is one of the eight Centres located in Cáceres, and offers bachelor's and master's degrees focused on four profiles: Building, Civil, Computer and Telecommunication Engineering.
In order to achieve the purposes of our Center, the collaboration with local, provincial, regional and national authorities is absolutely necessary:
1) In that respect with the City Council of Caceres we have achieved a SmartCity project competing nationally with other cities, getting 4 million euros for the development of Ingeligent Tourism or Intelligent Heritage, led by Raúl responsible for tourism in the City Council of Cáceres.
2) With the Provincial Government of Caceres we have collaborated with 4 municipalities near the city of Cáceres on issues of implementing energy saving measures in their buildings both from the point of view of construction and from technological aspects and data acquisition by sensors.
3) With the Regional Government of Extremadura (Junta de Extremadura) and the Ministry we have managed very specific equipment in our labs, with high cost devices such as laser cutter, vinyl cutter, CNC, ... with an investment of more than one hundred thousand euros in the school of technology itself.
In the School of Technology there are more than 20 research groups, and of them 15 groups with the principal investigator in the center itself. Each of them works in many areas of Technology and Science (STEM), and also many of them in transfer with companies, in a direct collaboration to achieve the necessary innovation at this time for our region.
This meeting about Environment, Green Technology and Engineering is closely related to the topics that work in these research groups of course: green economy, circular economy, etc.
I always like to talk about technology as something good towards the environment if we learn to use in a correct way. When the Internet started, and now, there is also who believe it as something bad. Here is the same. For instance, Internet of Things can do that in terms of energy efficiency that this society that spends and consumes everything, how to control and moderate all with low cost and low energy consumption technology.
In these positive and valid technologies for our objectives and that we work in these research groups mentioned above we have: drones, 3d printing, SmarCities, Building Information Modeling, BigData, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, robotics, etc.
In relation to the themes of the congress, I will mention two corporate projects of the School of Technology: SmartOpenLab y SmartPoliTech, which are transversal to all the degrees and masters in our center: Building, Civil, Computer and Telecommunication Engineers.
On the one hand, SmartOpenLab (SOL, in English the meaning is the SUN). Motivated by the ideas of the fablab network (digital fabrication laboratory), we started our trajectory in 2014 inside a small office in the School of Technology, in Cáceres. Just two hundred euros on Arduino boards and a fifty-buck toolbox were enough to start a very good experience. Soon the space was taken by the students, all in love with the idea of an open space to do their projects with the help of others. We received some initial funds from several departments of the University, and it was enough to buy our first 3D printer, and more materials to do more projects… From then we have not stopped while increasing our tools and capacities.
Our community is already composed with people from the University (students, professors and staff) and outside the University (teenagers, makers, retired people, all kind of curious people, all of them in a horizontal structures. We develop different kinds of projects: personal, academic, institutional, business… We offer ourselves as a place for designing, building and repairing many kind of things. We are mostly composed by engineers and scientist and we think we can help and give ideas to some different areas.
On the other hand, SmartPoliTech aims to transform the School of Technology in a large experimental ecosystem, living-lab where technology contributes to the welfare, energy efficiency and research experimentation.
The project's goal is to turn our center in a place for the design, implementation, integration and validation of systems capable of creating smart spaces by SmartX technologies development; an energy efficient space, to make easier social and academic life in campus, and that appeals to the personal development of its inhabitants and users.
Welcome again, hoping you enjoy your stay in our city and remember that we are here to help you. Therefore, now, we have inaugurated our congress. Thank you all and from time to time look up carefully for the dragons.
http://www.egteic.com
