Cities are at the centre of most of our lives and are becoming more central with the passing of the years. They must also become smart.
Recognising this, in its Sustainable Development Goals the United Nations set out ambitious targets for cities that commit to its 2030 agenda, in effect designing a program for their transformation into smart and sustainable cities. Because urban areas already account for 70% of global energy consumption and produce 75% of greenhouse gas emissions, energy policy is a key element in hitting the UN’s targets.
Smart cities and their administrations save energy by seeking out and using innovative ways of carrying out their various functions, from security and planning, to mobility and lighting and much else besides. The result is to make smart cities more efficient, more liveable and sustainable. Above all, cities become more digital, generating data that can be used to hone procedures to supply more efficiently the better targeted services the citizenry demands.
Enel X’s City Analytics uses the Big Data generated by the interactions of citizens and visitors to improve administrations’ understanding of the ways in which their city is experienced. City Analytics integrates inputs from sources ranging from local governments and mobile apps to advertising networks, and from open data to the various Enel X sensors and cameras. It then employs machine-learning algorithms to generate meaningful insights that administrators can use to improve the choices they make when planning mobility and security, managing road traffic and parking, and deciding on the best places to put new infrastructure.
City Analytics demonstrated its power during the lockdowns this year, using Big Data to create a Mobility Map. This is an interactive map developed in partnership with HERE Technologies, showing the flows of citizens in and out of each region, province and local council area of Italy, and was dreamed up specifically for the emergency. It allows users to see the movements that have taken place on any day right from the morning after. The Mobility Map is available free of charge to Italian citizens until July 31, 2020.
As of today, City Analytics operates a subscription service in Italy, Spain and Brazil, monitoring flows of pedestrians and vehicles, offering estimates of resident and visitor numbers and showing heatmaps of the busiest areas of the city. The analysis is presented on an easy-to-understand dashboard.
This helps show how people are distributed across the area of interest, where they are going and where they come from, as well as revealing the behaviours of specific groups such as commuters, residents and tourists. It can be customized to meet the real information needs of administrations to ease decision-making, monitor flows, and optimise size and positioning of services and infrastructure from parking lots and charging towers, to garbage bins, as well as in planning road traffic flows. The data collected is handled in accordance with the relevant privacy regulations. It is gathered anonymously, aggregated and processed before being relayed to the main dashboard. City Analytics can also be used in statistical and predictive modelling, allowing administrators to prepare for events and the stresses they might put upon infrastructure and services.
As part of the Enel Group, Enel X can draw on half a century of expertise in the energy business. We have combined this unrivalled history and knowhow with cutting-edge technologies and digital platforms with a single aim -- to facilitate and simplify a city’s management processes.
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