Information and Communications Technologies for Smart Cities and Societies

This chapter aims at proving the reader with an overview of the opportunities, challenges, open questions, and threats, inherent in the broad and somewhat ill-defined phenomenon known as the Smart City. A few key domains are identified and discussed: mobility, health and welfare, security and policing, energy, administration and politics, and education. The core of the chapter is preceded by two sections that propose a historical and cultural angle presenting the Smart City as the technology-redeemed offspring of more troublesome ancestors.

The knowledge of how people move in urban areas is helpful for the effective deployment of many city services, such as planning and management of transport mobility services, management of security procedures during crowded public events, and design of new public spaces. In the last decade, several technologies have been exploited to collect relevant data to get key insights on the number of people that gather in different points of interest, the amount of time the people spend there, and how frequently people return. This chapter reviews the latest technological solutions that have been developed in this field which exploit the following data sources: radars, lidars, cameras, Wi-Fi sniffers, CDRs, and crowdsourcing applications. It also provides an analysis of the pros and cons of each alternative, the achievable accuracy, and the types of areas that can be monitored.

The social and economic cost of COVID-19 has revealed that prevention strategies are potentially very cost effective by comparison to coping with a pandemic. The actions by Public Administrations and businesses need new approaches in order to benefit in health and quality of life. As a consequence, the concept of Future Cities and Industries as human-centered realities that balance economic and technological advancement to solve society’s problems is urgent. It represents a new vision for a resilient society where humans, nature and technology create a resilient and sustainable balance enhanced by data. This new digital transformation results in new resilient and sustainable environments permeated by a sustainable economy and the creation of products and services with low environmental impact and high social impact.

The Smart City concept relies on the use of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to allow for intelligent services to be integrated throughout metropolitan areas, providing innovative services and improving the quality of life. As technology advances, such services become increasingly accessible to a larger population share, and to elderly and frail users in particular.This paper provides an overview of research carried out at Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Parma, geared towards improving the lives of elderly people by leveraging IoT technologies, also in the framework of recent collaborative-research projects.

Smart Cities aim to improve urban life by making cities more accessible, sustainable, and safer. From this concept emerged the idea of smart society. In smart societies, pervasive and innovative technologies and data are exploited to enhance society’s overall functioning and well-being. In this context, smart mobility plays a relevant role. This chapter aims to present three case studies, developed as a proof-of-concept (PoC), in the context of sustainable and accessible urban mobility. In comparing them, different dimensions of interest will be considered, such as (i) the community of interest, (ii) the design process, (iii) the exploited technologies, and (iv) the engagement strategies. Ultimately, some final remarks are presented, discussing the relevance of actively engaging communities in creating smart services for our cities and society.

Cities are facing challenges to increase sustainability in the current and future scenarios. Smart city is a possible solution for facing these challenges. This paper has the main objective to investigate the level of advancements of the smart city paradigm at European level. A specific focus is on the Urban Transport, which is one of the three pillars of the European smart city paradigm, with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Energy. Two approaches are followed for the investigation: a top-down approach, from the indications of the European Commission (EC) to the smart city projects implemented by the European cities; a bottom-up approach, from the initiative promoted by European cities about sustainable urban mobility, with a specific attention to the Mobility as a Service (MaaS) paradigm. The obtained results show that EC is spending great efforts for implementing the smart city paradigm to increase sustainable urban mobility. However, the integration among the three pillars is, at today, limited. In the smart mobility sector, this is even more apparent. The great part of the MaaS initiatives pay a specific attention to ICT issues but they require more insights about integration among ICT, Transport System Models (TSM) and Energy productions and consumptions. The final aim is improving transport planning and designing processes aimed at improving urban sustainability.

Recently, the evolution of emerging information and communication technologies (e-ICTs) has been opening the road for developing and implementing new integrated and dynamic city logistics solutions, and subsequently for identifying new frontiers of intelligent transport systems (ITS) supporting the development of smart cities. In this context, the paper reviews the new e-ICTs, pointing out the opportunity that they are offering in implementing actions within the goals identified by the Agenda 2030.

E-commerce is a new digital and business transaction channel that refers to the sale of items, including daily groceries, i.e., food and beverages, through web-based digital shops. Its rapid growth is also strongly facilitating the development of smart cities while taking advantages of ICT infrastructure and evolving transportation. The recent pandemic and related travel-related restrictions have stimulated the spread and vigorous use of online-based channels, influencing behavioral choices and travel frequencies. The increased diffusion of technology and greater exemplification of digital platforms has helped attract more users predisposed to use e-grocery. There is no doubt that passenger and freight mobility is one of the key issues for integrated planning in urban areas. Therefore, the growth of e-commerce and home delivery is likely to affect the structure and performance of the urban supply chain: the development of smart cities will have to consider last-mile distribution issues with those related to food perishability, influencing the success and profitability of e-commerce companies while assessing which parts of the city may be most “attracted” to online shopping by defining factors and relationships among them. This paper focuses on the evaluation of smart city planning and evolution strategies in the context of Sicily, Italy. Particular attention was paid to residents of the Sicilian hinterland area with critical focuses on infrastructure and transportation services. To have a better understanding of the operation of e-grocery in Sicily, a virtual “snowball sampling” survey was conducted considering users who live in different areas of the island and have the experience of using e-commerce for groceries. This study brought out a number of considerations that can improve and make last-mile distribution more sustainable taking into account the location type (i.e., historic centre, expansion areas and suburbs), consumer behavior and preferences. The data were analysed and processed through descriptive statistical analysis. The results not only highlight the important growth of e-commerce for groceries in Sicily with reference to specific categories, but also pave out the foundation for improvement of planning by allowing the implementation of strategies that are based on better interactions between urban space, consumption and flow management of goods to help create smarter and more liveable cities.