NEC is participating in the development of Brazil’s first “smart city” project in cooperation with Arena Pernambuco Consortium, a subsidiary of Odebrecht Group, a Brazilian multinational company.
The consortium is in charge of managing the new multipurpose arena and also of promoting an urban development in the metropolitan area of the capital city of Pernambuco State, Recife.
The area is already drawing attention for the construction of a new stadium for the 2014 FIFA World Cup and Pernambuco State is targeting the establishment of a next generation smart city that offers an entertainment district with residents business and R&D facilities, an University, Hotels and Shopping Mall in order to provide a self-sustainable environment after the World Cup.
Under the MOU, which was entered into in the presence of Pernambuco’s governor, NEC and Arena Pernambuco will now jointly propose next generation urban infrastructure, including “e-Government that utilizes cloud computing,” “intelligent energy systems,” and “construction of ICT infrastructure in support of a wide variety of large-scale events,” allowing the region to be a center of tourism, entertainment and distribution through advanced technologies.
Pernambuco’s smart city project will benefit from NEC’s experience of similar solutions including public safety solutions deployed in more than 30 countries throughout the world, solutions equipped with sensing devices, such as RFID, and environmental and energy solutions being field tested both domestically and abroad, including the projects being conducted with Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in the US and ENEL Distribuzione in Italy.