Cellnex connects Casa Bloc – Volume 2: All ready!

Early 2020 marked the start of the project to provide connectivity to social housing in the Llar Casa Bloc in the Sant Andreu district of Barcelona, organised by the Hàbitat3 Foundation.

The works to refurbish the building containing 17 social rental housing units adapted to the accommodation needs of people at risk of social exclusion were carried out throughout the year and they are now ready and connected so that the first tenants can move into their new homes.

“Cellnex has equipped each home with a Wi-Fi network and has installed various sensors that measure electricity, gas and water consumption, but also air quality, temperature, CO₂ and humidity”, explains Laia San Juan, IT Project Manager at Cellnex.

Each of the homes comes with a tablet for tenants to consult their power and water supplies in real time, without having to wait for the invoice from the utility, allowing them to make faster and more efficient decisions regarding consumption.

Likewise, the managers of the social entities that protect these homes use the Cellnex SmartBrain platform to gain real-time access to the consumption and measurement data that the sensors of the homes are recording, thereby heading off any risks and forecasting and recommending future patterns of behaviour. These housing units will be home to around 40 people with mental health issues or addictions, or homeless people, or those suffering residential exclusion, who in turn will receive support from social entities.

“With these comfort sensors and using statistical scales, social entities can assess whether a home is within specific parameters and can intervene and interact with tenants to help them and improve their day-to-day lives,” says Anna Sala, a building technician from the Fundació Hàbitat3.

Do not miss the third and final chapter of this series dedicated to the Llar Casa Bloc project, in which the people who will live in these homes will tell us about their day-to-day experience and how projects like these can help reduce the digital divide, because connectivity in the Llar Casa Bloc is the visualisation of “how technology can be applied to the well-being and improvement of people’s lives”, concludes Laia San Juan, IT Project Manager at Cellnex.