On World Water Day Toni Pérez highlights the need for good resource management and the importance of a good technological ally

The mayor of Benidorm has participated this morning in a digital meeting organized by Hidraqua, Diario Levante and Club Information on the importance of digitization in city management on the occasion of World Water Day.

After pointing out the importance of the process and the advantages it has brought, Toni Pérez pointed out "the added value and the excellent harmony with Hidraqua" in the management of the integral Water Cycle in Benidorm, highlighting "the extraordinary involvement" of the company in relation to the city.

In two years, Pérez recalled, "100% of the homes in Benidorm will have water meters with remote reading module to know and control consumption in real time, being able to detect leaks and breakdowns, without extra cost to the taxpayer."

The mayor listed actions of the Strategic Investment Plan "with more than 30 million until 2027" and influenced management parameters such as "the performance of the water network that is around 94%" or that "doubling the population and tripling the number of visitors , water consumption is 23% lower than 25 years ago ”. Toni Pérez stressed that this is effective, efficient and sustainable management because "Benidorm has made a virtue of necessity", a fact that was corroborated, among others, by Professor Gil Olcina, who oversees the Municipal Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change.

The mayor also pointed out the monitoring for detection and control of discharges to the sewage network and the innovative application of the City Sentinel program to control the presence of coronavirus in wastewater; tool that is already implemented in many other localities. And in this chapter, Pérez once again thanked Hidraqua and its teams for their commitment, which were confined to their facilities to ensure, at the beginning of the state of alarm, both the supply and purification of the waters in Benidorm.

The mayor of Benidorm addressed, to questions from the moderator, other parameters of digitization and innovation such as the implementation of electronic Administration in the Benidorm City Council, pointing out the two-way advantages of the digitization process: “the citizen finds management solutions and active participation, and the city council achieves a more efficient and dynamic management ”.

There are 131 procedures that can be carried out through the Electronic Headquarters of the Benidorm City Council, which, Pérez pointed out, “has made possible more than 230,000 municipal management operations during 2020, with more than 17,700 Covid aid files” in what he considered “a jump of quality towards a more profitable administration and with a plus of security ”.

The pandemic, in this sense, said the mayor, "has acted as a lever for all citizens to join the digital process that was already widely implemented in companies and freelancers." And in the specific case of Benidorm, he pointed out, "it has caught us better prepared than we thought".

And he connected this question with the proposals that Benidorm has been carrying out as a Smart Tourist Destination since 2015, which enabled this city to be the first certified DTI in the world since December 2018. Pérez stressed that “DTI is innovation, which is in the DNA of Benidorm, and digitization ”. He pointed out that in the DTI the key is to add and "Benidorm was the embryo of the DTI network of the Valencian Community and Spain." And in this line he elaborated: "the key is in the journey we have made to be leaders and in continuing to work to continue being so."

Toni Pérez recalled that Benidorm is in the analysis and interpretation of the data that right now, in this situation, leads us to "emotional analysis" to improve everything, every day, as we did, he recalled, last summer with the Benidorm Beach initiative Safety, beaches for everyone, every day and safe.

Together with Toni Pérez, the professors Jorge Olcina (University of Alicante) and Enrique Bigné (University of Valencia), the directors of the Technological Institute of Informatics, Laura Olcina, and of the Scientific Park of the Miguel Hernández University Tonia Salinas, the mayor of Cullera, Jordi Mayor, and the general secretary of Hosbec, Nuria Montes. On behalf of Hidraqua, the general director, Jordi Azorín, and the head of Innovation at Dinapsis, Antonio Sánchez, have participated.