300.000 Km/s, know the results of this team supported by the STARTS Cross-Fertilization Program
STARTS CROSS-FERTILIZATION PROGRAM is coming to an end. This program was founded by STARTS PRIZE and ambitioned to support past STARTS PRIZE winners and honorary mentions to further develop their projects and have greater social, economic and sustainable impacts.
Three projects were supported by this Program: ALMA TOOLKIT, Urban Citizen Learning and RP3DPSE.
In this article, we are glad to share the successful results of MODEL project (former name: UCL – Urban Citizen Learning) and its ambitious plans for the future.
MODEL is a project developed by 300.000 Km/s, an international and award-wining urban innovation agency founded in Barcelona. The company was founded, in 2014, by Mar Santamaria and Pablo Martínez, two visionary architects that believed in the relevance of using new forms of information to address contemporary urban challenges. Today, 300.000 km/s counts with a growing team of experienced professionals from different fields – architecture, urban planning, data science and programming – and together they explore the potentials of latest data technologies and computing paradigms to improve urban analysis, strategic planning and decision-making.
In their project “MODEL”, the team intended to enhance their approach and business model. The result is ‘M-O-DE-L’, a platform that gathers 300.000km/s experience and the set of services that the company can provide in the field. With “M-O-DE-L,” the team aims to enable cities to harness data and technology for more informed and auditable decision-making processes. This framework empowers urban stakeholders and citizens to actively engage in the development of future cities, promoting sustainability and enhancing the quality of life for all.
In concrete, M-O-DE-L translates a new technology that allows us to describe collectively our cities and help public bodies implementing policies to solve the increasingly complex urban challenges. It is a workflow based on building an urban data model of a city (fuelled with local and open information) used to evaluate and simulate public policies inside a digital twin. This model can incorporate, according to the client needs, several participatory strategies to validate and evaluate the data model (for example, through citizen science experiments in which citizens train AI algorithms or other forms of engagement using data and technology).
M-O-DE-L gathers the following specific services:
| Service | Description | Output |
| Data consultancy | Design of customised consultancy processes for public bodies and city stakeholders to discover the availability and readiness of public data to address urban challenges. | A road map of the potential of data infrastructure |
| Digital twin | Building of a digital data model of the city that aggregates the most relevant indicators corresponding to specific urban challenges. | A self-governed digital model to drive public policies. |
| Data platform | Tailoring and implementation of a digital platform to visualise and share the client digital twin and data insight. | A digital platform |
| Co-creation | Creation of specific citizens’ engagement processes supported by digital and analogical participation methods based on client’s city insights. | Tailormade collective learning and decision-making experiences. |
M-O-DE-L services can be applied to different scenarios:
Source: https://model.300000.eu/#uses
The company provide different examples of past services, through which we can get a more detailed overview of the various possibilities of the services provided:
Source: https://model.300000.eu/#cases
With more than 10 years of experience, several awards, 10 cities explored, and +10.000 citizens involved in the co-creation process of urban planning, 300.000 km/s and its project M-O-DE-L reached a solid knowledge and experience, capable of offering high-quality consultancy services to a wide range of stakeholders from different areas and sectors, motivating and supporting innovative, citizen-oriented and sustainable decision-making processes.
M-O-DE-L is accessible to all interested stakeholders in the following link: https://model.300000.eu/
If you are interested in 300.000Km/s and its M-O-DE-L services, you can explore and discuss their range of services by contacting them here: https://model.300000.eu/#contact
M-O-DE-L core team
300.000Km/s is also available to showcase and share their experience. If you are interested in hosting a workshop with the team, please consider the following needs:
Technical setting needs for 300.000Km/s – M-O-DE-L workshop:
– Meeting room for small groups or conference room for larger groups;
– Screen or projector for displaying presentations, videos, and results;
– Budget to cover travel expenses and fees for one or two team members;
– In the case of online presentations, fees for participating team members.
