Hitachi and the The European House – Ambrosetti have collaborated on the Connected Cities Initiative: a research project to examine the major trends and challenges affecting Smart Infrastructures in cities. Click on the infographic below to see the highlights, or download the full report here.
The ability to deliver reliable and valuable services to citizens remains a priority within city planning, development and management. Digital transformation can play an important role in providing these Smart Services.
The key elements in Italian cities are mobility, energy and water supply. Citizens are increasingly aware of environmental and social issues. As a result, renewables take a central role in electricity generation and water leakages must be solved.
Open spaces are becoming increasingly relevant, with urbanization adding growing pressure to city infrastructures and municipal services.
Effective digitisation enables proper Smart Services, putting citizens’ needs at the core.
Digitization also brings challenges. It risks creating uneven development and progression as the need for investment clashes with decreasing Public Administration budgets.
The data-economy has its own challenges, including privacy, data ownership, and cybersecurity.
Regulation struggles to keep the pace with digital disruption, citizens’ protection and service provision. GDPR introduces a strict set of requirements for those who collect, store and manage private data.
Current technology can provide Smart Mobility, Smart Energy and Smart Water services, but without full cooperation among stakeholders, effective implementation will be impossible.
Integration can be driven by a central Urban Control Room, which collects, stores and analyses data gathered from different sources. Smart meters, autonomous driving solutions and water grid monitoring sensors can all contribute to the Urban Control Room.
Integration is key. Co-creation with clear governance and strategy is required. Most of all, citizens should be at the core of such processes.
The ability to deliver reliable and valuable services to citizens remains a priority within city planning, development and management. Digital transformation can play an important role in providing these Smart Services.
Cities and urban spaces are growing fast. They are also acquiring renewed importance, as a greater share of the population relies on such entities to fulfill their every need. To do so, public utility services (such as transport, energy and water provision) play a crucial role.
Digital transformation together with innovative business models have the potential to revolutionize the design, management and delivery of such services, achieving proper Smart Infrastructures that mix operational concepts and IoT platforms to meet citizen’s needs and to bring efficiency, sustainability and inclusiveness to the system.
To identify an effective and sustainable strategy for Italian cities towards the deployment of Smart Infrastructures, Hitachi, together with The European House – Ambrosetti, has launched the Connected Cities Initiative.
The Connected Cities Initiative is part of Hitachi’s Social Innovation Business, which aims to develop novel solutions through collaborative creation with citizens, municipalities, businesses and other public and private actors, to deploy both IT and OT (Operational Technology) and new business models to bring real positive change to the lives of individuals and societies, creating shared value.
One of the results of the Connected Cities Initiative is the “Study on Smart Infrastructures”. It analyses major trends and challenges affecting Smart Infrastructures in Italian cities and defines a new technological and organizational model capable to effectively address them. Such model is enabled by IoT and is based on integration and co-creation approaches. It is the key pillar for Italian urban ecosystems to achieve state of the art public services that are future-ready.
The Connected Cities Initiative also produced a second report on Smart Safety in cities. Click here for more
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