Smart Life - New Smart City models, between Internet of Things, security and automation

Over time the Smart City concept has changed and evolved, also in line with the development of the technological innovation. After the lockdown period, many balances in the urban planning sector have changed and this has obviously also affected Smart Cities. If in the personal sphere the emergency forced us to follow a slower pace, making us give up some of the frenetic activities we were used to, in the social and collective sphere, on the other hand, it pushed the accelerator on the processes of digital transformation and the adoption of new technologies and IoT devices – Internet of Things, i.e. "intelligent" objects interconnected with each other in order to exchange the information collected and processed.

Today the key and most relevant words of the new Smart City model are safety, efficiency, inclusiveness and sustainability: it is thus a matter of creating increasingly digitized and connected cities that place the citizen, his health and well-being at the centre, which are able to use the data and needs of the urban enviroment through new technologies to provide appropriate services and solutions.

On this theme, which is constantly evolving and developing in a logic of trial and error, it is interesting the opinion of Carlo Ratti, architect and designer, director of the Senseable City Lab at MIT in Boston

"Cities have for centuries been key hubs for social experimentation, starting from the Italian city-states in the Middle Ages. Nowadays, confronted with the physical-digital revolution of the Internet of Things, urban innovation is more than ever necessary. At the same time, technologies such as facial recognition, mobile phone data monitoring or self-guided mobility are raising serious ethical issues. The important thing is that there should be discussion and civic involvement on the subject so that we can continue our experiments in urban innovation and not build a barrier-wall or pass over it in silence. A new language on these issues will be fundamental for a new urban future".

The key to the growth of Smart Cities will largely depend on the use of the Internet of Things system, which guarantees traceability, monitoring and data collection. Thanks to the Internet of Things it is now possible to collect large amounts of information to be used to develop valuable or public utility services, from smart parking to air quality control, from smart lighting to smart mobility, from water management to structural controls.

More specifically, the technologies that are being implemented now, mainly concern mobility management, public lighting, environmental monitoring, as well as security and control of the territory.

In this context Nice is at the forefront of contributing to the intelligent and automated transformation of cities. An example of this is the project just launched for the Smart transformation of the city of San Marino (Italy), which will start from the car parks developed by our client, ParkIt, with whom we have already collaborated for the Ciampino Airport in Rome. In this project Nice will supply road barriers and automations, guaranteeing a completely digital system thanks to the use of barriers with the automated access control system. The kickoff conference was held on July, 30th and the completion of the work is expected by the end of the year.

Once again Nice is proud to put its technology at the forefront of innovative projects, with the aim of improving people's daily experiences, not only within their homes but also in urban contexts.