The university took part of the 6th International Congress on Smart Cities which was held in the city of Cuenca. The event was organized by the municipality and “DGG Comunicaciones”; the aim was to disseminate information about smart cities and have professor, experts and other guests discuss ways to create more sustainable, technological, smart, safe and innovative cities. 

Juan Cardenas, president of Universidad Politecnica Salesiana; Maria Augusta Hermida, president of Universidad de Cuenca; Baltazar Calvas, coordinator of SmarthLand at UTPL; and Augusto Cabrera, director of innovation at Universidad Catolica de Cuenca; spoke about the importance of academia for the development of smart cities. They stated it is imperative that there be better relationships between the public and private sector and there was a proposal to have a place for knowledge transfer and take advantage of the skills each university has to offer. 

 
One of the topics was the issue of data governance and digital infrastructure, the question was: How do citizens become smarter to build and coexist in a smarter city? Given that technology is not the only way of solving these problems, it is also the responsibility of citizens. Technology is the engine that must encourage the imagination of the academia to apply innovative ideas with a collaborative spirit to create a better world, which requires the commitment of everyone.

 
The event not only stressed technological advances, but also the importance of collaboration between the public, private and civil society sectors. Participants agreed on the need to work together to build smarter, more inclusive and sustainable cities.

During the congress, computing students from our university and professor Jairo Sacoto presented their research project – a platform for IoT.