We unraveled the meaning of FIWARE and discovered that it is a concept and a technology that is born from the most basic of human relationships, communication
Communication has been one of the fundamental tools that human beings have had throughout their existence for the development of solutions that helped the social and evolutionary progress of the species. Nowadays, it continues to be a fundamental tool, since teamwork allows us to unite and add different sources of human knowledge to solve a task, both in the professional field and in others.
This concept is not much different in the digital world, which is becoming increasingly embedded in many aspects of our daily lives. One of them is the so-called Internet of Things or IoT, but what really is IoT?
Its name already gives us some clues and allows us to deduce what this concept consists of. The IoT aims to connect devices and elements which are apparently not intended to use the Internet, or other communication networks, so that they can share information with each other.
A close example is home automation, which seeks to automate homes and buildings. Some devices and virtual assistants such as Siri (Apple), Google Assistant (Google) or the famous Alexa (Amazon) allow us to control and manage many of the elements we have at home in a smarter way.
What is the relationship between these devices and FIWARE?
To answer this question, we will again use the example of home automation. If we think about all the gadgets we have at home, we will easily see that they all come from different suppliers, manufacturers and distributors, which makes the communication and cooperation between them in order to solve problems and provide us with greater comfort harder, returning to the concept presented at the beginning of this article. If we want these devices to collaborate between them, they must “speak” the same language.
This problem magnifies in much more complex environments such as the Port of Huelva. Here it is not only devices that need to communicate with each other, but also processes, action protocols, companies and administrations involved in all the activity that an ecosystem such as a port has.
FIWARE was born with the purpose of solving these kinds of problems, where a large number of members with a certain need to work together are involved. The objective is to always ensure that functions are performing efficiently without duplicating efforts or slowing down work, among other advantages.
FIWARE is an initiative, platform and set of open-source technologies, that was born under the umbrella of the VII Framework Program of the European Union in public-private collaboration for the development of the Future Internet. This technology was first introduced in the Smart Cities field and gradually expanded to other domains such as Agrifood (Agriculture and livestock), the energy sector or the industrial sector to finally land now at the port-logistic sector for the first time and do it in the Port of Huelva.
FIWARE iHubs
But FIWARE is also much more than just technology, it is a community of experts, evangelists and centers spread all around the world with a total of 26 iHubs distributed across 16 countries in Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia, the latter embodied in Japan.
The objective of the iHubs is to help the local business and business fabric (specifically startups) to be more competitive in today’s digital economy, as is also the case in La Lonja de la Innovación.
In addition, at La Lonja de la Innovación we have a FIWARE dynamizer, Manuel Bravo Santiago, whom we invite you to meet to learn more about this ecosystem.
This FIWARE iHubs maxim is reflected in a very precise way in its slogan “Think global, act local” and that is why we help startups and businesses interested in implementing their solutions in the Port of Huelva, that were already working with this technology.
FIWARE enables the ecosystems in which it is implemented to better and more intelligently manage the services and activities that occur within them and to use this available information to create new solutions.
In future posts we will discuss the components, data model and more aspects of interested of this technology so that you can learn more about all aspects related to FIWARE.