IoT’S POTENTIAL: AVEIRO'S DEVELOPMENTS IN THE AREAS OF MOBILITY, ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY
Smart cities hold some of the planet’s most awe-worthy demonstrations of the IoT’s potential; in this article, we will share Aveiro Steam City project’s experience and shed light on the smart city applications through IoT-enabled smart city use cases that span multiple areas: from contributing to a healthier environment and improving traffic and intelligent transportation systems to enhancing public safety and controlling air and noise pollution.
Read the full article to find out more on the use cases that run in the framework of Aveiro Steam City UIA project!
“The sensing and radio infrastructure, both fixed and mobile, is able to record, in real-time, mobility and environmental data, making a complete live map of these parameters in the city, and providing all the data for traffic monitoring and safe driving systems. This, complemented with the fixed stations, provides real-time communication between the vehicles, the network, the users and all sensors around. This makes our approach for city mobility unique: not only we can get all information from all fixed and moving elements in the city to better manage the city traffic, the roads, the parking spaces, the information to the citizens and city planners, but we can also act proactively on the city to build new mobility services such as improving safety of vulnerable road users, such as people on crosswalks, bicycle and motorcycles, or providing direct lanes to priority vehicles, avoid and act in real-time to accidents (with direct contact with the hospital and doctors, and safety forces), virtual and augmented reality services in the path to self-driving and safety cities. This is only the beginning, as our living lab infrastructure is open and available for companies and institutions to build new services and applications that, at this stage, we may yet not be able to foreseen.” SUSANA SARGENTO - Full Professor University of Aveiro
“Having access to air quality and noise data in the city we’re living is a forward step towards best citizens practices in a sustainable city. Aveiro Steam City projected and installed a monitoring network capable of delivering real time environmental data available through the Digital Urban Platform. Users will easily (and friendly) obtain useful information about the environmental profile of Aveiro.” ANA MIRANDA - Full Professor University of Aveiro
Use cases' added value
The three use cases presented here are very advanced demonstrators. They are to be considered as a - crucial - piece of the living lab that is being built in the city of Aveiro, where we have: an enabling infrastructure, a certain number of devices that work in the logic of the IoT, and a digital platform ready (or almost ready) to record all data transmitted, act as a business intelligence tool and run the services online. This is the big picture.
The added value that use cases bring to the project is precisely to give a concrete idea of how to develop an investment plan in assets and infrastructures for smart cities. The city, and therefore its citizens, will be able to understand on the one hand what the Aveiro Tech City initiative (of which the UIA "Aveiro Stream City" project constitutes the backbone) translates in terms of services; on the other hand, citizens will become familiar with a series of "technological products" which, in the absence of UIA funding, it would probably not have been possible to acquire, at least not in the short term. The ultimate goal of this process is to bring citizens closer to the local administration in an efficient way, through a conscious use of technology, thus also aiming at both transparency and effective communication. In fact, the data on the services collected through the sensors and IoT equipment, in compliance with the GDPR, will be made public and easily accessible to citizens through the user interface of the digital urban platform, as well as serving as a decision support tool for the Aveiro administration.
Jobs and skills in the local economy
