News

The Smart Region Summit was held at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve on 18^th and 19^th May, showcasing the technologies available to the community, integrated in 3 organisational axes: Digital Transformation, New Mobility, and New Organisations for a New Era.

Infraquinta E.M. was invited to participate, together with the other municipal companies, representing the Loulé Municipality, in order to show the technologies used in the Digital Transformation axis.

It was an interesting challenge that we immediately accepted, first of all for the pride in representing the Municipality, and then for the pride of finding a stage which would allow us to show the technology employed in the efficient and effective management of its resources.

I say challenge because, effectively, it is not easy to showcase or to summarise everything we use in terms of technology, starting with the monitoring of the quality of the water for consumption in the whole of our intervention area, from the delivery point to the client’s faucet, the cadastre and its implementation in the georeferencing system; the mathematical modelling of the hydraulic system; the elaboration of the Patrimonial Management of Infrastructures plan; the management of the energy efficiency and of the flow rate in the pumping and distribution systems; the creation of redundancies in the supply; the landscaping plan for public spaces, its maintenance, and the search for new tools more environmentally friendly; the new platforms for communicating with clients, partners, and those interested, not only in a more direct way, but in a bidirectional way, in which there is an active participation in the search for the better solution; the application of telemetry, telemanagement, and management of occurrences or planned events; the water balance and its applications in the fight against losses and illicit consumption; the rupture detection systems; the systems of document management and of reporting to the various authorities, and last but not least, the management of this whole volume of data produced daily.

Since 2004, there has been a continuous and sustained investment in technologies that allow us to continue to develop new solutions to dynamic problems that pose new challenges for us, so that we can overcome the obstacles faster, more safely, and with less impact on the client.

It is necessary to mention a factor that has not yet been addressed, and that without it, all existing technology is rendered worthless: the human factor, which operates and uses all this technology to put it at the service of the company. From planning to execution, the whole team gives their best in order to achieve the best results.

Technology helps a lot, but it does not replace knowledge, or will, or human resilience, and even less will replace the feeling. In a more restricted sense, that feeling that with our work we contribute to a greater good.

Sam Walton

A computer can tell you down the dime what you’ve sold. But it can never tell you how much you could have sold.