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ICF Factor 05 / 06 · Include
A city that includes
A digital city that leaves people behind is not intelligent: it is exclusionary. Murcia tackles three forms of exclusion at the same time —digital skills, small local businesses and sensory accessibility— guided by one operating principle: leave no one behind.
+12.000
Personalised support sessions
+85.000
Active Form@carm users
€21 million
Kit Digital funding mobilised in the municipality
32.000
Smart NaviLens markers deployed
31
Cultural centres with sensory accessibility
What Include means
Accessibility is not just a ramp: it is information within reach
For the Intelligent Community Forum, no community can call itself intelligent if its digital transformation creates new forms of exclusion. Murcia identified three simultaneous divides: older people facing bank-branch closures and digital public services; neighbourhood businesses competing with global platforms; and sensory barriers that traditional accessibility never fully addressed.
Traditional signage has a structural limitation: Braille requires you to find the sign before you can read it. Locating a distant bus stop or navigating a large building remained impossible. The city moved from passive accessibility to active, technology-assisted inclusion.
Digital skills
NUBE and Form@carm: human mentors in neighbourhoods and outlying districts, plus official DigComp certification.
Local business
Acelera Pyme: diagnostics, grant guidance and training for 95% of the local business base.
Sensory autonomy
NaviLens and Bemyvega: urban wayfinding from 15 metres away and inclusive cultural access across 31 venues.
Cross-cutting layer
The use of artificial intelligence appears here in NaviLens computer vision, automatic speaker-tracking units and transcription into 119 languages. As elsewhere on the portal, it is a cross-cutting capability, not a separate Factor.
01 — An ecosystem operating at two speeds
From ALAS classrooms to the NUBE Cloud Hub
The structure combines broad territorial coverage with advanced technological specialisation: a local support network reaching neighbourhoods and outlying districts, and a flagship centre training people in disruptive technologies. Two speeds, one goal.
Local support network
A human mentor
Successor to the ALAS Network, it serves neighbourhoods and outlying districts alongside the Form@carm platform. Its distinguishing feature is not the equipment: it is a person who helps solve today's urgent digital task and then guides a personalised learning journey from there.
April 2026
Central Cloud Hub · Abenarabi building
Twelve interactive workstations and laboratories for 3D printing, drones, robotics and virtual reality. It works in two phases: immediate onboarding —handling everyday digital tasks safely— and reskilling, with official DigComp certifications.
Local support network · neighbourhoods and outlying districts
Three strands of digital equity
Financial autonomy01
Financial autonomy
In-person workshops address the exclusion caused by bank-branch closures. Participants practise real online-banking operations in a safe environment, regaining independent control over their finances and privacy.
02
Administrative independence and e-health
Support to set up digital identity —certificate and Cl@ve— and use the TuMurcia app. Participants learn to use the Virtual Health Card and Patient Portal, and to manage appointments and treatments without depending on others.
03
Citizen cyber shield
Fraud and phishing prevention. The educational portal provides the theory, while in-person mentors address real threats as they arise, building a digital community that can navigate online with confidence.
+12.000
Personalised assistance sessions for mobile banking and digital certificates.
+40 %
Increase in use of the e-Government portal in outlying districts.
+85.000
Active Form@carm users in the municipality: a high-impact digital campus.
+1.500
People per year: projected direct impact of the Cloud Hub in 2026–2027.
Digital-empowerment policies over these two years have prevented older people from becoming disconnected from public services. STEAM and robotics labs also turn the Hub into an accelerator for local employability, providing advanced skills and DigComp certification for young people and the long-term unemployed.
02 — The digital divide facing neighbourhood businesses
Acelera Pyme office network
Launched in 2021 under Spain's National SME Digitalisation Plan. Large companies had the resources to digitise quickly; small retailers and self-employed workers lacked technical knowledge and capital. That divide threatened their viability against global platforms.
Pillar 01
Assessment and roadmap
Specialist advisers carry out digital-maturity audits to design personalised technology roadmaps scaled to each microenterprise's real capacity.
Pillar 02
Grant guidance
Many self-employed workers give up on grant applications because of administrative complexity. The offices act as facilitators so Kit Digital and Kit Consulting support reaches the businesses it is intended for.
Pillar 03
Technology matchmaking
It connects local demand with digital providers in the municipality. That circuit feeds a circular digital economy and helps the region's own software industry grow.
Pillar 04
Resilience and reskilling
Webinars and practical workshops demystify applied AI, omnichannel marketing and cybersecurity protocols, helping local businesses compete with major global players.
Three locations, specialised coverage
Chamber of Commerce
Historic centre: traditional retail and services.
FREMM Technology Centre
Industrial sector: metalworking, automation and logistics.
AJE meeting points
Young entrepreneurs and newly established companies.
Results
“Helping the neighbourhood shop survive in the digital market is an employment policy, not just a retail policy.”
03 — The two invisible barriers
NaviLens and Bemyvega
Started in 2018 with public-transport pilots, the programme reached full technical maturity in 2025. Two barriers, two responses: spatial orientation, addressed with NaviLens, and access to real-time information, addressed with Bemyvega.
Phase 1 · since 2018
Universal wayfinding through computer vision
NaviLens replaces analogue signage with a computer-vision standard. Its high-density colour markers are detected instantly from 15 metres away and across a 160-degree angle: information can be captured with a natural sweep, even from a moving vehicle or in low light.
In April 2026, 100 smart totems were installed in the historic centre: they are not screens, but digital nodes that merge the physical and digital environment. The technology is integrated throughout the public-transport network, in traffic signage and at monuments.
Investment: An initial €6 million under the MiMurcia project plus an additional €417,026.50 in 2026 from NextGenerationEU, funding 32,000 smart markers and 100 landmark totems.
Phase 2 · since late 2025
Accessibility 4.0 in culture and public administration
Technical architecture deployed across 31 municipal venues, including the city's leading theatres and museums. Vega hardware makes culture and public services audible and visible to everyone, removing barriers in live settings.
Type 3 systems
High-capacity units in major theatres, with zero-latency capture.
Type 2 units
Automatic speaker tracking in administrative buildings, designed for people with low vision.
Type 1 units
Mobile units that turn any exhibition room into an accessible space within minutes.
Audiences follow events on their own devices using multi-stream viewing —stage, speaker and digital presentation converge in real time— with automatic transcription into 119 languages. In parallel, Viewser software has been deployed across all municipal web platforms, supporting WCAG 2.1 AA/AAA compliance and providing specific tools for ADHD, colour-vision deficiency and reduced mobility.
Investment: €413,222.50 contract formalised in November 2025, funded by the Recovery and Resilience Facility in coordination with SEGITTUR.
100 smart totems · historic centre · April 2026
A living lab, exported worldwide
The technology was refined in Murcia before being exported to the metro systems of New York, London and Tokyo. For people with visual disabilities, the city has gone from being a maze of obstacles to a continuous stream of audio information.
Modernising 31 cultural venues with Vega systems also makes Murcia the first Smart Tourism Destination in Spain to offer “culture without limits”. The model is sustained through a public-private partnership with Neosistec, the local technology company that created the system.
Stakeholders
Who makes this Factor possible
The direct impact reaches 10–15% of the population with a disability or age-related limitation, while the systemic impact reaches 100%: a universally legible city works for everyone, including visitors.
Funding
Public-private partnership and European funding
Documentation and services
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Projects in this Factor
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