Abstract
A Smart City can be defined as a complex socio-technical system in which services are optimized by the use of digital telecommunication technologies for the benefit of its inhabitants and business activities. The Smart City topic is today at the centre of many debates at European and international levels, also for the potential impact of the innovation of urban services within the overall performance of cities. Literature and virtuous cases of Smart Cities at the European level envisage optimization and innovation scenarios for traditional Urban Facility Management (UFM) services, based on the application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), in particular Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data management. Although the interest in the transition of the cities towards Smart Cities by administrations is growing, this transformation process appears to be still experimental and not much supported by shared knowledge references and tools. In light of this premise, the contribution - that is part of the PRIN research “Metropolitan cities: economic-territorial strategies, financial constraints and circular regeneration” - introduces the main results of the study conducted on a sample of 21 cities at the European scale with the aim of deepening and analyzing: (i) current innovation scenarios of UFM services enabled by ICTs that allow information sharing (Big Data flows) and a continuous monitoring of infrastructures and physical assets at the urban scale; (ii) characteristics and main trends in the implementation by public administrations of information platforms for the provision of smart UFM services and, more in general, for the smart management of cities; (iii) the potentialities of Milan, investigating the evolution of the offered smart urban services and of the adopted cognitive tools to manage city information, highlighting main trends, strengths and possible scenarios of improvement.
Highlights
The adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is redefining the scenario of traditional Urban Facility Management (UFM), understood as the integrated management of support services for the operation, use and enhancement of urban goods [1]. These services are today affected by important changes, especially in metropolitan areas, due to the evolution of ICT solutions and the application of Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data paradigms, which concern aspects such as: methods of data detection, analysis and management; methods of communication/interaction with users; monitoring of performance; methods of response of systems, network interactions, etc
The digitalization of urban management processes is not bringing services towards ICTbased solutions, but it is redefining in a disruptive way the meanings of the concept of the city itself [2, 3], multiplying the interpretive keys of its cognitive methods [4], dynamically expanding its boundaries in relation to the growth of networks based on smart specialization strategies [5, 6]
Despite the diversity of approaches in the adoption of ICTs, the analyzed Smart City case studies and the recent studies on Smart City management converge in proposing a change of approach from siloed vertical management to integrated holistic governance. The transfer of this integrated systemic approach to UFM management practices can be realized through the implementation of Open Smart City Platforms able to organize realtime data coming from heterogeneous sources and to optimize decision-making at operational and strategic levels
Summary
The adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is redefining the scenario of traditional Urban Facility Management (UFM), understood as the integrated management of support services for the operation, use and enhancement of urban goods [1]. These services are created mainly through “bottom-up” processes, enabled by ICTs, with the involvement of various actors (developers, users, etc.), who have an active role in the recognition of problems and needs and, in some cases, in the definition of application proposals, such as: reporting of accidents and roadblocks (London), the case of voluntary citizens’ organizations to carry out cleaning and maintenance of local common goods (Barcelona), or the more structured cases of car pooling applications or short-term hosting proposed directly by citizens This new concept of services derives from the integration of public administrations (in an open government logic, thanks to databases, web applications and open information platforms for data sharing made available to all by PAs) and the “privates”, no longer intended only as traditional private players (e.g. private service provider companies), but as an aggregation of small players, such as developers, interested citizens, researchers, technology suppliers, etc., which generates novel forms of social entrepreneurship; 2. This is the case of Vienna, that implemented an adapted version of the FIWARE Platform (by Fiware Foundation EU), which expands the potential of real-time data visualization - including functions of interpolation of data coming from different projects (e.g. Smarter Together, eLogistik, etc.) through open source Real Time Networks [32]
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