SMART CITY

BELO HORIZONTE - SMART CITY STRATEGY

The Principles of Smart Cities

• Utilize the Smart City Approach to tackle the challenges of municipal administration;
• Evolve the technologic infrastructure based on integrated management among several areas of the City Government;
• Interact with the technologic environment of the city to build joint solutions;
• Foster technology businesses to define the IT sector as a brand of the city, favoring the economic development and job offers;
• Position Belo Horizonte as a smart touristic destination through interaction and integrating of the visitor to the city, qualifying this experience using technologic resources;
• Undertake technologic and scientific events to position the city as reference in the IT sector allowing the generation of opportunities for new businesses and attracting investments.

Smart Solutions for Modern Problems 

​

Smart Cities are in perpetual motion in the search for solutions. The problems they face are not even brand new; yet, while conventional approaches have been tried and tested historically, new complexities arise and old ones gain new contours. There is a movement, looking steadily at these modern problems, and pushing agendas to find solutions tying together the city’s efforts with the grand advancements of this new world full of ideas, catalytic technologies and smart approaches. The smart city movement understands that opening the space for new ideas and technologies to tackle its daily challenges, promote a city-wide mentality of innovation and problem solving. Pushing out-of-the-box fixes for the new urban demands. Committed to that, Belo Horizonte has engaged in interconnected smart city approaches, increasing operational efficiency and sustainable development; improving response capacities of its administration; deploying digital technologies to improve quality of life; providing access to efficient public services, and enabling transversal action of its agencies. Those shared problems of world cities, handled in innovative, unorthodox and effective ways. 

Belo Horizonte SMART! 

​

​

The City of Belo Horizonte has been developing actions towards urban modernity through Belo Horizonte SMART! It involves all areas of the municipal administration, integrating the city’s policies, transforming its future. 

The program focus areas are:

Sustainability, environment and citizenship;
Mobility and security;
Accessibility to governance and citizen services;
Resiliency in economic and urban development;
Technology culture and digital inclusion.

The smart city approach of Belo Horizonte combines the focus areas at different levels. Internally, several instances of the City Government collaborate in developing and implementing solutions for the city. This promotes a smart mentality in public servants. On the public level, the solutions deployed improve citizen engagement and services provision.
 
The program develops an integrated set of solutions which make use of innovative and technological approaches to connect citizens with public administration and improve the city’s response to its challenges and necessities. Thus, improving and transforming the quality of life and citizen engagement and inclusion.

Developing Smart City Solutions

STRENGTHENING OF THE URBAN AGRICULTURE AND AGROECOLOGY SERVICES

Food security, urban farms, agroecology and sustainability. Connecting the citizens to better solutions in healthy, inexpensive and accessible food systems. Important to emphasize that the city has 3 popular restaurants serving 10 thousand balanced and healthy meals every day of the year. 

BIOFACTORY

Ladybug breeding for biologic pest control on green areas and urban farms.

PEE4TREE

Deploying a chemical technology in public chemical toilets transforming urine in sustainable fertilizer.

RENEWABLE ENERGY GENERATION CENTRAL

Using photovoltaic panels and biomass from the residues obtained from tree pruning.

PEDALA BH

Expansion of the city’s bike roads, adding 78km more over the already 83km operational.

LED STREET LIGHTING

171 public lighting lamps replaced with LED, 26 thousand with systems of tele-management.

COP-BH

COP-BH (Center of Operations of Belo Horizonte), integrating the areas of safety and prevention, urban mobility, civil defense, inspection, urban cleaning, and others. 1501 video surveillance cameras integrated and operated at the center.

OPEN DATA

Official data availability formatted for ease of use and access in several businesses and projects.

BHLAB

Open IoT BHLab at Prodabel – open city laboratory to foster innovation, urban development and new technologies experimentation, especially for IoT. This connects to a network of 302 digital inclusion centers, spread throughout the city.
 

​

BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGIES IN MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION

Applied mainly at the digital tolling system for street parking, called Rotativo Digital, enabling several apps to offer the service to citizens.

PBH APP

For Android and iOS, the app offers a platform for service request and follow-up through the citizen’s mobile phone. Several services are available including street maintenance, city maps, property tax bill issuance, service evaluation and much more! 

BELO HORIZONTE’S HACKATHON

A major coding competition, focused on finding technology solutions for the city’s challenges.

HORIZONTE CRIATIVO

Integrative initiative, fostering and developing creative industry among entrepreneurs of the arts and culture.
 

OPTIMIZING CONNECTIVITY FOR CITIZEN SERVICE

711 km of optic fiber spanning several areas of the city, currently under expansion

FREE PUBLIC WI-FI

92 free internet wi-fi access points (hotspots), 57 in areas of vulnerability. The program will reach 1000 hotspots in 2020.

CODING DREAMS / CODING HER DREAMS

Project for technical qualification in software coding for vulnerable women. There is a special program developed only for women coding to promote access empowerment and women equality.

For all these iniciatives, and many more, the City Government invested R$ 150 million, with estimates for continued development, reaching over R$ 400 million until 2020.

FAB CITY

Belo Horizonte joined the Fab City Network in July 2018, in France, being the second city in Brazil to be part of the initiative. Currently, besides the capital of Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Curitiba, Recife and Sorocaba are part of the group. The network connects 34 cities around the world, including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Boston, Mexico City, Paris and Hamburg, who are working to change the paradigm of today's industrial economy and are committed to acting locally to implement new urban models. The commitment acts synergistically with global developmental milestones that meet environmental, social and economic objectives, such as reducing carbon dioxide emissions, reverse economy and relocating production.

AWARDS

• 7th place of the National Smart City Ranking by Rank Connected Smart City 2018;
• 2nd place in Health indicators;
• 3rd place in Sustainability and Environment Management;
• 7th place in Technology and Innovation infrastructure;
• 2019 Achievement in City Environmental Management by Associação Nacional dos Órgãos Municipais de Meio Ambiente (ANAMMA);
• 2018 4th time Winner of WWF and ICLEI City’s Challenge for the Planet in Brazil;
• 2018 Special Mention Award for Social and Economic Equity in Tel Aviv’s Annual Meeting of the Milan Pact. Awarded to the city’s popular restaurant program;
• 2018 Inova Cidade, in São Paulo, awarded for the LED lighting system with tele-management.