Sentilo is an open source sensor and actuator platform designed to fit in the Smart City architecture of any city that looks for openness and easy interoperability. It has been sponsored by the Barcelona City Council, through the Municipal Institute of Informatics (IMI), as part of a project started in November 2011 conceived for define the strategy and the necessary actions in order to achieve global positioning Barcelona as a reference in the field of Smart Cities.
Since then the city has taken a unique position of not only advancing its own initiatives, but trying to provide support for the global smart cities movement. This has been manifested in a few key initiatives. Barcelona holds the premier global event for smart cities stakeholders, the Smart Cities Expo World Congress. Barcelona is also the driver behind the City Protocol initiative which seeks to connect global cities in pilot projects to address common challenges. Barcelona has also been testing all kinds of sensors on everything from noise and air contamination to traffic congestion and even waste management.
As part of the designed Smart City IT architecture IMI has developed an open sensor and actuator platform, released as Open Source available to any city or organiztion who could benefit from it. Nowadays Sentilo (that's the name of the project) it’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of cities and companies that believe that using open standards and free software is the first smart decision a Smart City should take.