(by Vito Coviello AIDR member and Head of the Digital Technologies Observatory in the transport and logistics sector) The digital revolution has given rise to "digital natives": children, adolescents and young people who develop a new way of communication and lead a profoundly new existence. to the past.
But the digital revolution has surprised and dragged all and other generations to it, pushing them forcefully into a whirlwind of rapid change.
From the cogito ergo sum of Descartes, to the dubito ergo sum of Saint Augustine, up to the current… I type ergo sum, therefore.
But is the digital revolution also positively changing our urban mobility experiences?
Are our cities already able to fully exploit the potential for technological and digital innovation available?
Today, compared to the past, there is certainly a strong attention of the regions and municipalities regarding cities: everyone would like to make them increasingly smart and green.
We find the term smart city everywhere: there is no public authority, mayor, political group that does not talk about cycle paths, new services for citizens, new booking systems and access to services offered by the Healthcare, new systems of transport.
We all want “smart cities” based on technological and digital innovation but… how soon will it be possible to give citizens a level of service that takes full advantage of all the available technology?
Many European cities are adopting IOT and cloud based platforms in order to:
- Proceed with a systematic and orderly collection of data in real time, thanks to the use of intelligent devices (sensors, cameras, ...)
- Organize collected data centrally
- To transmit them to all the infrastructures created for their use
- Proceed with data analysis to make decisions in real time or plan interventions to solve a specific problem or potential risk;
- Monitor the city with the different operational centers integrated with each other.
Smart devices can allow you to know for example:
- The situation of city traffic by indicating alternative routes;
- The level of occupancy of a public transport (count passengers and free seats);
- Waiting times for a vehicle that has free seats (especially important in the time slots of
- The first hospital and the earliest date for a specialist examination / visit
- How to access certain services through facial recognition systems (access to public offices, check-in ...)
- And so much more …
There are many initiatives underway in all large European and extra-European cities, also in consideration of the strong concentration of the population in metropolitan areas and the ever-increasing demand for services.
Buses, trains and subways, for example, thanks to the sensors, the cameras installed and the 5G connections, are able to send huge data flows to the control centers and from here the data are analyzed by artificial intelligences capable of detecting dangerous situations, omissions of validation of travel tickets and much more.
But if technology is so advanced, then what is still missing to make cities truly smart?
Strong investments are needed, no doubt, but it is also necessary to plan in the medium / long term the design and implementation of a new data collection system through integrated platforms, to carry out a profound review of the processes and to equip oneself with the systems and means necessary to offer a true overall improvement of services.
But it is not enough to disseminate the roads with sensors to get all information on traffic if the roads are not passable because they are full of holes.
It is not enough to have just one super-equipped bus capable of communicating data with highly sophisticated systems to the operating centers, if the progressive replacement of all public transport means is not planned in order to offer a concrete improvement of the service and to reduce the level of pollution.
It is not enough to have a sophisticated booking system in the city to access the services of the ASLs and laboratories, only to discover that the visit can only be carried out after a few months, it is necessary to strengthen the health services.
It is not enough to have a system that tells us when in real time
public transport will pass at our stop, but you must also be sure that it has seats available and that it is frequent at peak times.
It is not enough to redo the entire road surface if the interventions for water systems, sewage systems, the upgrading of the connectivity system or other interventions that will make the newly paved road a Swiss cheese are not first planned.
Therefore, respect for the environment and for citizens must be placed at the center of attention to design the metropolitan areas that we want to have in 5 years.
the digital revolution is already underway, we need to make our ability to plan the future of our cities travel at the same speed.