19 February 2020

Italy and the Smart City: achievable or unreachable?

The Smart City concept is still in its infancy stage in Italy.

In the last decade there has been a remarkable growth in technology, one of the latest innovations is the transition, which will be added shortly both worldwide and nationally, from 4G to 5G.

This entails the need to transform cities into “smart cities“, inserting intelligent solutions to simplify, optimize, but above all improve management. A concrete example is Asia, which has started to implement intelligent traffic management and intelligent solutions for waste management in some municipalities.

The topic just exposed has been explain at the Milan Fair Event “Smart Building Expo 2019”, where we were guests at the stand of our WIND3 partners. Below is available an extract of the statements extrapoled from the direct interview with the technical manager of Brochesia, performed by the journalist William Pao.

There is an offprint in which you can read some informations about the interview:

The potential growth Italy has, should not be underestimated because the people themselves also realize the advantages that smart cities can offer. In particular, there are some problems facing Italian cities that can be solved through smart city solutions. “In Italy, traffic can be very much of a problem because in big cities like Milan and Rome, you get a lot of traffic jams, and getting traffic information in real time with alternative routes will help manage traffic in a better way and dispatch cars in different directions”, as Christian Salvatori, technical manager of Brochesia, said. “Italy is like Taiwan and China in that it’s a very industrial country, and people now are used to technology, in particular mobile technology, as they always need information on the move.”

In the meantime, technology will serve as the main growth engine for the development of an intelligent city in Italy. These types of “smart cities” require that a lot of data is transmitted to the cloud or to the control centers for analysis, here 5G can play an important role. Currently this service is offered on a trial basis by WIND3, which are the two main Italian telecommunications operators Brochesia’s partners. With the Brochesia solution, a user who wears a special pair of glasses (Smart Glasses) can share everything he sees with anyone in the world, trough the 5G transmission.

The technical manager of Brochesia also stated that “5G is being tested only in five Italian cities: Milan, Prato, L’Aquila, Bari and Matera”. However, he also said that once fully implemented, the contribution of 5G to the development of smart cities in Italy cannot be underestimated. Citing We explain some examples of how 5G has already made some Italian cities smarter.

“In L’Aquila, they are providing assistance to patients that are not in hospitals but in their home. With 5G coverage, patients at home can get good care despite they are not being at the hospital, ” as Salvatori said. “Also in L’Aquila, there’s a solution in which information in the streets is collected and transferred to an operative center, which then immediately distribute this information to citizens”.

Even if there are some obstacoles to overcome, Salvatori is optimistic about the future prospects for the development of a smart city in Italy. “The challenge is the finance. If the government cannot locate the money for investing, then they can’t do it. But the government through these trials has already realized the benefits citizens can get, “he said.” I’m optimistic. It’s just a matter of having the right funding and investing for getting the technology deployed. “

The full version is available at the following LINK.

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