Innovation: Italian approach to Smart City development

ENEA promoted a new initiative for outlining the passage from the conceptual model to a concrete implementation of Smart Cities in Municipalities, through the development of “tailored” measures for slashing costs and easing access to information.

The project, also involving the Presidency of the Council of Ministries, Consip, the Italian Industrial Federation and the Agency for Digital Italy, aims at promoting a digital transformation of managing processes of urban and territorial contexts, starting from a conceptual, methodological and technological convergence.

“In developing these new urban contexts, adopting a common language for identifying, processing and evaluating strategic data for the management of instractures supplying the main urban services, is crucial. Developing and sharing management models, standards, transmission protocols, technical specifics, platforms and performance indicators is a fundamental starting point for initiating the process of innovation and urban regeneration from a Smart City perspective” Nicoletta Gozo, ENEA researcher at the Smart Energy division, explained. Implementing a trasformation path towards a Smart City is the goal ENEA has set up, launching also the “ National Smart City and Community Convergence Table” .

“Cities and territories – Gozo went on – become smart if a close collaboration can take place among the main actors of management and urban innovation processes and the market, in the broadest sense of the term.

Management models, technical specifics, standards and protocols, in addition to instruments, actions and enabling technologies contribute to outlining the path, an actual roadmap towards a Smart City, with a support aid kit for administrators, a sort of “tool box” containing useful instruments for local governments”- “Currently, most of the cities manage strategic services such as illumination, water, electricity and gas supply, waste and mobility through utilities, completely autonomously and without sharing, not taking advantage of the strategic value of the great amount of data potentially held by them. The path we’ve taken promises to be long and winding and it comprises a roadmap of which we’re beginning to glimpse the first steps”. The Table, where the main actors of the national urban innovation process sit, has already produced “SmartItaly Goal”, the first policy document of the national roadmap.

For more information please contact:

Nicoletta Gozo, Department of Energy Technologies, Smart Energy Division: nicoletta.gozo@enea.it