The CIMNE-led PIKSEL project, which has developed a management and forecasting tool to study environmental, demographic, economic and social phenomena in Catalonia, has been recognised as the best R+D+I collaborative work in the second edition of the Joan Roget Knowledge Transfer Awards for its contributions to innovative regional planning.

From left to right, Xavier Baulies (former Head of Research and Innovation at the Department of Territory of the Generalitat and former member of the Executive Committee of CIMNE), Eugenio Oñate (Scientific Director of the Severo Ochoa Excellence Program at CIMNE and Professor Emeritus at the Technical University of Catalonia), Montserrat Guàrdia (president of the Social Council at UPC), Javier Bonet (Director of CIMNE), Ferran Falcó (Vice-president of CIMNE), Gabriel Bugeda (Institutional Relations Director at CIMNE)

PIKSEL, which stands for "Portal for the Integration of Knowledge for a Sustainable Ecosystems and Land Management", is a predictive tool based on computational methods and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) that compiles and generates procedures, diagnostic and prognostic models to study and respond to environmental, demographic, economic and social phenomena.

The prize, awarded by the Department of Research and Universities of the Catalan Government through the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation (FCRI), was presented to Prof. Eugenio Oñate, Scientific Director of the Severo Programme of Excellence at CIMNE and Professor emeritus at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, and Xavier Baulies, as leaders of the PIKSEL project. The award ceremony took place yesterday at the Palau de Congressos de Barcelona.

At the event, which was part of the Barcelona Deep Tech Summit, Prof. Oñate stressed that PIKSEL is an “absolutely innovative tool” that has been developed “in less than two years”, and highlighted the interest of the University of Oita in Japan in developing “a similar tool”.

Mr Baulies, former head of research and innovation at the Department of Territory of the Catalan Government and former member of the Executive Committee of CIMNE, stressed that PIKSEL allows public authorities to “think to act” and to “evaluate actions according to their capacity to generate territorial resilience”.

The PIKSEL project was launched in 2021 as a multidisciplinary collaboration between the International Centre for Numerical Methods in Engineering (CIMNE) and the Department of Territory of the Catalan Government, that funded the project, involving a wide range of stakeholders from public administration, academia, industry and civil society.

PIKSEL website