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 Safety in cities. Click on the infographic below to see the highlights, or download the full report here.
73% of respondents agree that public security is increasingly crucial for citizens and local communities in Italy.
Demographic changes and an ageing Italian population are reshaping safety requirements.
The scope of safety is expanding: security remains key, but citizens are increasingly aware of new issues such as infrastructural, environmental and digital safety.
Safety-related services are in the initial stages of a digital transformation, enabled by data (collection, accumulation, analysis). This implicates the growing relevance of new infrastructures, i.e. data centres, 5G and interconnectors.
The transformation of cities into Connected Cities and the provision of so-called Smart Safety, based on citizens’ data, turns citizens into smart citizens: they become service users and contributors at the same time.
Smart Safety brings several implications. The most relevant is related to personal data usage: a trade-off between safety and citizens’ privacy emerges as more effective safety services require increasingly pervasive amounts of personal data. Accountability becomes a mandatory requirement for each digital integrated platform.
Regulation plays a central role. GDPR, the latest disposition enacted by the European Commission, introduces a strict set of requirements for those who collect, store and manage private data.
Technologies available today can enable the creation of Connected Cities with innovative Smart Safety services that put new communities’ and citizens’ needs at the core. This can be driven by a so-called Urban Control Room, which collects, stores and analyses data gathered from different sources.
New technologies based on Artificial Intelligence have made predictive analysis possible, enabling law enforcement and other service providers to better manage their resources.
Integration is the key. Stakeholders must collaborate, sharing meaningful data and enabling smart, vertical services. Co-creation of technologies, infrastructures and services is crucial to enable effective integration. Citizens must be involved at the core of these processes.
73% of respondents agree that public security is increasingly crucial for citizens and local communities in Italy.
Urban spaces are today experiencing unprecedented pressure to transform together with rapid changes that are hard to anticipate. Within this context, public safety becomes an issue of particular importance for both citizens and city mangers.
Digital transformation, increasing relevance of data and data-based models bring new challenges and make it harder to effectively ensure safety within urban spaces. On the other hand, they also offer new solutions: through digital integration and cooperative approaches it is today possible to create so called Smart Safety services.
Success however requires collaborative creation, new organisational structures and innovative business models that bring together all those stakeholders involved in urban planning, development and management. To identify an effective and sustainable strategy to achieve Smart Safety provision in Italian cities, Hitachi, together with The European House – Ambrosetti, has launched the Connected Cities Initiative.
The Initiative is developed within the broader framework of Hitachi’s Social Innovation Business, whose purpose is to develop novel solutions through a collaborative creation process with citizens, municipalities, businesses and other public and private actors. Hitachi’s Social Innovation Businesses deploys both IT and OT (Operational Technology), as well as innovative business model, in order to generate real positive changes for individuals and society at large, creating shared value.
This “Study on Smart Safety” is one of the outputs of the Connected Cities Initiative. It frames and discusses the main scenario’s development and major issues concerning safety in Italian cities. It also discusses a novel technological and organizational model to address them. The purpose of the study is to support public bodies and to provide valuable solutions for all the urban stakeholders, and first and foremost for citizens.
The Connected Cities Initiative also produced a second report on Smart Infrastructure in cities. Click here for more
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