•Notícia

Through the Innovation Radar report the European Commission reviews the innovation potential of ICT projects funded under the Seventh Framework Programme and the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme of the European Union. For the report, a total of 279 ICT projects carried out between May 2014 and January 2015 were analysed. These projects have resulted in 517 innovations by 544 European organisations. Of these organisations, Sparsity, a UPC spin-off, was ranked first among the ten most innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) because of its key role in developing technological applications for data processing.

Sparsity was also ranked third in the overall innovation ranking, behind the University of Cambridge and the German research centre Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, first and second, respectively. The ranking analyses universities, research centres, SMEs, large companies and other organisations.

The Sparsity spin-off is a company created within the UPC. It was launched in 2010 by the Data Management Group (DAMA-UPC). This research group is linked to the University's Department of Computer Architecture and is part of the Innovation and Technology Centre (CIT UPC), which is a member of the Government of Catalonia's TECNIO network.

The spin-off was called Sparsity because its field of activity is large volumes of information and data dispersion, in which there is an answer to a specific question can only be found by exploring chaos. Sparsity operates in this galaxy of information. "We answer complex questions, which could not be done with a relational system in a reasonable amount of time," explains Josep Lluís Larriba, director of the research group and one of the company's founders.

An example of some applications developed by this spin-off is a system that allows decisions to be taken to improve urban mobility, such as influencing the flow of pedestrians to prevent congestion or encouraging visitors to commercial areas that are typically less busy. Public authorities, which are potential customers for this type of technology, could guide the flow of people to itineraries that explore less well-known parts of the city, relieve congestion in tourist areas and encourage the circulation of citizens. They could also promote areas that provide more cultural, leisure or shopping opportunities.

This idea has led Sparsity to be awarded one of 28 acceleration projects within the EU-funded frontierCities project, which supports the introduction to the market of smart mobility applications for cities across Europe. The Sparsity project is focused specifically on the city of Barcelona.

The company has also worked on a tool called Tweeticer to identify the most influential users in specific areas of interest in order to build a high-quality audience on Twitter. Its other areas of work include detecting potentially fraudulent property transactions and analysing the causes of cancer.

The Innovation Radar report also highlights Barcelona as the most important innovation hub in the field of ICTs in Europe, with 19 organisations that are key players in innovation. Barcelona is therefore ahead of London and Paris, which have 17 key players each. By country, the report draws attention to Germany, Spain and the UK, in that order, with regard to the number of companies and institutions that are leaders or especially relevant for innovation in ICTs.

The Innovation Radar is based on a statistical evaluation of ICT projects funded by the two framework programmes mentioned and it aims to identify results with high potential for innovation and the companies and institutions that are leading the projects. In fact, the report is a first step on the part of the European Commission to demonstrate the economic impact of EU funding of research and innovation programmes.