Barça and BSC complete first phase of IoTwins project

FC Barcelona and BSC-CNS, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación, one of the most important supercomputing centres in Europe, have completed the first phase of the IoTwins project, an innovative system that applies the internet of things and artificial intelligence to analyse and predict the movement of people inside and outside the Ccub's facilities. Once fully developed, it will allow for improvement primarily with management of the mobility of visitors and the offering of services. The results of this first year of implementation of the project, together with a look at what the stadiums of the future will be like, are two of the topics that will be discussed today by two panels at the Sports Tomorrow congress organised by the Barça Innovation Hub.

The IoTwins project consists of modeling the movements of people through the club's facilities, collecting anonymous data and creating a computer simulation that reproduces the most common movements by the public. This system will provide information that allows decisions to be made in real time, optimally managing the use of the facilities once the public can return to the stadium. It will facilitate movement, anticipate crowds and organise emergency devices, as well as aid in the rearrangement of spaces during the construction process for Espai Barça.

Construction of the digital Twin has begun over the course of this first year, and will serve to simulate the movements of the different profiles of users who visit the club's facilities. It is based on Pandora technology, simulation software social developed at the BSC. To create these typologies, historical data from the club have been compiled to show how visitors access the different areas at the facilities.

FC Barcelona and the BSC are working to adapt this tool to serve as support for managing the gradual return of the public, when authorities allow. This is done by incorporating a Covid-19 transmission model into the simulations, which would allow the analysis of different ways of regulating entry of fans into the stadium, seeing which one best suits safety measures: Social distancing and capacity restriction.

Crowd Management the foundation of the project

FC Barcelona and BSC have developed this initiative within the framework of the IoTwins project, funded by the European Commission and part of the Horizon 2020 program, the most important of its kind in innovation in the European Union. An open call proposal was valued very positively by the European Commission, which allowed the club and the BSC to be part of the group of 23 entities that will undertakee the IoTwins project.

The strong evaluation that the project received by the European Commission is due, to a large extent, to the work carried out in recent years by the club in this area through its Information Technology department, which was carried out with the implementation of Crowd Management, an initiative aimed at turning the Camp Nou and future Espai Barça into one of the first Smart Stadiums in Europe.

Both the IoTwins project and the concept of Smart Stadiums will be discussed today during the Sports Tomorrow congress, organized by BIHUB. The first will be entitled 'From Stadiums to Smart Facilities,' part of the Business in Sports Tomorrow conference, whilst Smart Stadiums will be part of the 'Smart Venues' panel, within the Technology in Sports Tomorrow conference.