EEB Project System Integration and Technology Sperimentation Matrix

Introduction

The great challenges of this Millennium such as urbanization, resource efficiency, climate change, responsible consumption and production, globalization, circular economy, and connectivity frame cities as a reference point for future development. Tackling these priorities requires a systemic approach to innovation that aims for a system-wide transformation by affecting the economic, social and environmental dimensions as well as their interconnections. This implies a trans-disciplinary solutions-oriented perspective that integrates technology, advanced models, organization, governance and regulation and involves co-creation of knowledge and co-delivery of outcomes with economic, industrial and research actors, public authorities and civil society (European Commission, 2020). As is known, a Smart City provides “the effective integration of physical, digital and human systems in the built-up environment to deliver a sustainable, prosperous and inclusive future for its citizens” (The British Standards Institution, 2014). In that framework, it is not a single system that defines an intelligent city, but an interconnected network of innovations, “a system of systems” (Mitchell, 2001), focusing on the interaction between network and network and between the city and final users to make sure that the city can be more suitable to the citizen’s needs, and the citizen is increasingly active in the creation of new sustainable cities. Although often associated with energy efficiency and sustainability, smart cities are much more than that as outlined in Figure 1, concerning the efficiency of urban operation and services. Over the past years, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) allowed the correlation of data, processes and methods often very different from each other to make them available. At the same time, it links and strengthens networks of people, businesses, infrastructures, energy and spaces, besides providing intelligent organizational and governance tools (European Parliament, 2014). Cities and building managers need to have systems to analyze data for better decisions, anticipate problems to resolve them proactively and coordinate resources to operate effectively (IBM Corporation, 2012). Even more urgent today is to dwell on the concept of resilience exploring “the reactive, recovery and adaptive capacities and also the transformability of urban systems” (Chelleri & Olazabal, 2012). The resilient city is continuously facing an ever-widening range of pressures that focus on time in its various expressions: degradation, human neglect, natural hazard events, as well as transformation, innovation, and the constant evolution of human needs. To govern this evident complexity is imperative to refer to a knowledge system of the built heritage that from closed and static must become increasingly dynamic and updated with real-time information (Shah et al., 2019).

Figure 1.

Smart City scenario

According to this vision, a more future-oriented definition of smart cities already comes from the Chinese National Smart City Standardization. It talks about “a new concept and a new model, which applies to the new generation of information technologies such as the internet of things, cloud computing, big data and space/geographical information integration, to facilitate the planning, construction, management and smart services of cities” (ISO/IEC JTC 1, 2014). Therefore, to works better, a smart city needs to be structured around a digital twin (Wright & Davidson, 2020; Riddhi et al., 2020) representative both of tridimensional representation with information relating to its operation and of how people interact with the built environment. Already successful in manufacturing with predictive and fault prevention functions, the potential of digital twins for buildings, infrastructure and entire cities is yet to be fully discovered. In this scenario, digital models can be seen as the foundation of this state-of-the-art knowledge and management systems. In fact, it is possible to trace a clear connection between Building Information Modelling (BIM), Geographic Information System (GIS) and the Smart City concept as they imported in the world of architectural and territorial design powerful tools able to give excellent data richness to the projects. As buildings have a significant impact on cities in terms of economic, efficiency and quality of life, the strengths of system integration are summarized below.