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METACITIES Winter School successfully held by the Greek Ecosystem

On Thursday 12th and Friday 13th December, University of Patras and University of the Peloponnese welcomed 50 electrical and computer engineering students to Metacities Winter School entitled “Metacities vision: from Data to Digital Twins and Metaverse technologies for Future Cities”.

The winter school, held in Patras (Greece), was a resounding success, bringing together industry leaders, researchers and students to explore cutting edge technologies shaping the next generation of smart cities researchers and entrepreneurs.

Two technical sessions (“Data traveling from sensors to applications in Smart Cities” and “Machine Learning Enabled IoT Data”) were offered to the students including hands-on exercises, after a presentation of METACITIES’s objectives, methodology and case studies by the project coordinator, Prof. Spyros Denazis. Through these sessions, the participants had the opportunity to:

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  • follow the data paths (timeseries, images, video etc.) from their generation on sensors in a city, over cutting-edge networks to the cloud where they were processed with modern methods
  • be introduced to basic knowledge of networking, cloud engineering, IoT, HTTP & MQTT protocols
  • familiarize with the concept and use of RESTful APIs
  • acquire knowledge about the role of Fiware and the functions of its Components with a focus on Orion Context Broker
  • implement a demo of creating virtual sensors and transferring data from virtual and real equipment to a user-facing application using Fiware

  • use time series analysis and forecasting tools in the context of IoT

The third session (“Smart City Technologies: Insights from the Industry and Start-Up Ecosystem”) was devoted to sharing market-driven innovations in smart cities and to enhancing the students’ entrepreneurial skills by giving them some strategic advice on how to prepare for participation in hackathons, in view of the hackathon that will be organized by Metacities in 2025. Insightful presentations from prominent industry players, including Renesas Electronics, Irida Labs, Yodiwo and p-NET were featured, showcasing advancements in areas such as IoT, AI, immersive technologies and digital twins.

Engaging discussions followed each industrial presentation, the students’ interest in participating in hackathons was triggered, while they were offered windproof jackets with METACITIES logo as a commemorative gift for their participation.

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