‘BeHive’, winning proposal in EIT Urban Mobility InnovaCity

21/6/2019

Professionals from mobility sectors, entrepreneurs and public workers proposed solutions to urban mobility challenges as part of the EIT Urban Mobility Challenge, organised by the UPC and Barcelona City Council on 20 and 21 May. ‘BeHive’, a subterranean system for storing goods that imitates beehives and promotes the reuse of packaging, was the winning project.

The EIT Urban Mobility InnovaCity Challenge was organised by the UPC, together with Bit Habitat and Barcelona City Council, and held at the Ca l’Alier Urban Innovation Centre in Barcelona on 20 and 21 May. Participants had to find technological solutions to challenges in European cities relating to the implementation of sustainable mobility.

Participants in the initiative included teams made up of professionals from relevant sectors, entrepreneurs and public workers. Over the two days of the event, they worked to create prototypes of viable solutions and present the results before a panel of experts. The winning proposal was ‘BeHive’, an underground system for storing goods in the form of a beehive that also promotes the purchase of products with reusable packaging, as a recycling discount is offered. The idea was devised by Eva Español, Alejandro Cavazos and Jasmina Casals, lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the UPC.

The team’s prize is a visit to the EcoMotion global event held in Tel-Aviv on 10–13 June, together with the winners of the other two Challenges: one held in Tel-Aviv on 29–30 April and one held in Munich on 6–7 May. 

Other groups that participated in the Challenge came up with solutions such as the promotion of a system of removable batteries for bicycles, the establishment of restricted times for goods deliveries to the city via lorries, the creation of laboratories to promote mobility as a service or a proposal to pedestrianize the narrow streets of Barcelona’s Gothic quarter, with the installation of bicycle stations at strategic points.

EIT Urban Mobility InnovaCity is promoted by EIT Urban Mobility, the community within the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) that is in charge of developing the European Union’s innovations in urban mobility, led by Barcelona.