Towards Smart and Resilient Cities

T

he World’s inhabitants moving from rural areas to cities are in continuous increase. Cities with high inefficient transportation systems and poorly designed buildings, and with high consumption of quantities of fossil fuels and high levels of greenhouse gases emission, are headed to an inevitable collapse. In response, smart cities can replace today’s carbon-consuming urbanism with a new sustainable one. Thanks to the integration of information and communication technology (ICT) and various physical devices connected to the IoT (Internet of things) network, transportation systems, and buildings can be developed towards greater sustainability and resilience [1].

Smart cities aim to improve efficiency, equity, and quality of life by using collected data from different types of electronic methods and sensor with the purpose of improving and optimizing the operations and the management across the city, such as traffic congestion, energy usage, water supply networks, waste, and air quality. In the smart city concept, the community interacts directly with the city infrastructures and services, giving a contribution to the data collected and develop a real-time response which also prepares the city to respond quickly to challenges. Thanks to the use of ICT, the empowerment of citizens is largely emphasized to create a widespread sense of social cohesion, awareness of the relevant issues, and active support of the citizens.

Climate change, water scarcity, and growing waste are three of the main environmental issues challenging in contemporary cities. The resilient city concept aims to increase the quality of life by absorbing and adapting any heterogeneous stress factor and guaranteeing citizens’ safety. Consequently, the integration of the two concepts, as shown in Figure 1, improves simultaneously and synergically the whole city concept. Mitigation strategies combined with adaptation strategies are key to counterbalance possible catastrophic impacts and to absorb the effects of hazards through adaptation and transformation.

To achieve the goals of smart and resilient cities, electrical infrastructures, called smart grid, have a key role in the energy transition. Important objectives of smart grids are the implementation of renewable energy technologies to power entire urban areas, achieving net-zero carbon dioxide emissions, decentralizing power, water, and waste in small-scale systems, endorsing green infrastructure, moving from liner to circular systems, increasing communication among cities and regions in a bidirectional way, and finally achieving “electrification” which refers to transportation supplemented by electric vehicles. Figure 2 shows the expected structural changes from a traditional to a smart system in energy management, made possible by the increased use of digital tools.

To promote the smart and resilient concept, the European Commission has launched the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC), with the aim to support the energy production, distribution, transportation, and digital technologies and to improve services while reducing energy, as well as greenhouse gas emissions and resource waste [4,5].

In smart cities, circular economy is a key concept. Our global consumption is exceeding the capacity of the planet to regenerate, and because of this, it is important to shift from a linear to a closed-loop system. The main idea is to minimise the use of resource inputs and the creation of waste by reusing, repairing, and recycling. Waste materials and energy are input for other processes. The circular model has to be employed in every industrial sector, in the economic, social, and environmental production and consumption. An example of the circular economy application is the recovery of nutrients and the production of bioplastics from daily processed wastewater streams. Also, the scarcity of water is already a serious problem and many territories have been affected by water shortages, which are destined to worsen as a result of climate change [6]. Therefore, the need to encourage the use of alternative sources of water and the reuse of wastewater. Furthermore, the need to focus on the sustainable use of natural resources, the fostering of environmental remediation, the improvement and enhancement of ecosystems, the management and protection of water and air quality, the monitoring of the response to environmental threats for human health.

In the face of climate change, it is important to develop solutions, technologies, and financial response to possible impacts. A key asset of smart and resilient cities is the dynamic interplay of learning capacity, persistence, adaptability, and transformability across multiple scales, as shown in Figure 3 [7,8]. The model is structured as a cyclical process characterized by three different stages connected through a feedback loop: strategies’ definition, implementation, and management. Along the process, there are different periods: short, medium, and long term. In the short term, strategies are orientated to improve cities’ capacities to climate-related impacts by increasing systems’ persistence. In the medium term, cities enhance their capacity to deal with unexpected impacts by improving systems’ adaptability. In the long term, strategies should drive the urban transition towards the prevention of future climate-related impacts by improving cities’ transformability.

The capacity of continuous and dynamic learning is crucial for the smart and resilient city concept. Learning capacity can be improved using several approaches such as networking, the ability to connect people and devices for exchanging data and information, monitoring, to detect conditions of urban system, knowledge, to elaborate the information, memory, to learn from past events and predict possible future scenarios, and collaboration and participation, to involve people in the decision-making process [9].

To conclude, it is important to move towards smart and resilient cities for both our safety and the one of our Planet. The aim is to live in a city capable to optimize and interconnect the components that characterize the urban systems by taking advantages of the modern technologies and the big data available. A creative city able to reinvent a new equilibrium against destabilizing external stresses and to adapt to new circumstances.

References:

[1]        R. Chapman, Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change, Journal of Urban Design. 17 (2012) 301–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/13574809.2012.666179.

[2]        A. Visvizi, C. Mazzucelli, M. Lytras, Towards an ICTs’ enabled integrated framework for resilient urban systems, Journal of Science and Technology Policy Management. 8 (2017) 227–242. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSTPM-05-2017-0020.

[3]        Bartz/Stockmar, Smart Grid – Staying big or getting smaller, (2018). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Staying_big_or_getting_smaller.jpg (accessed April 2, 2021).

[4]        European Commission, Energy and smart cities, (2020). https://ec.europa.eu/energy/topics/technology-and-innovation/energy-and-smart-cities_en?redir=1 (accessed April 2, 2021).

[5]        European Commission, Analysing the potential for wide scale roll out of integrated Smart Cities and Communities solutions, (2016). https://smart-cities-marketplace.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/SCC Solution 80 Best Practice Examples.pdf (accessed April 5, 2021).

[6]        ENEA, Circular management of water resources, (2021). https://www.fondazionesvilupposostenibile.org/gruppo-di-lavoro-per-la-gestione-circolare-delle-risorse-idriche/ (accessed April 3, 2021).

[7]        C. Folke, S.R. Carpenter, B. Walker, M. Scheffer, T. Chapin, J. Rockström, Resilience thinking: Integrating resilience, adaptability and transformability, Ecology and Society. 15 (2010). https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03610-150420.

[8]        S. Davoudi, E. Brooks, A. Mehmood, Evolutionary Resilience and Strategies for Climate Adaptation, Planning Practice and Research. 28 (2013) 307–322. https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2013.787695.

[9]        R. Papa, A. Galderisi, M.C.. Vigo Majello, E. Saretta, Smart and Resilient Cities. A Systemic Approach for Developing cross-sectoral strategies in the face of climate change, TeMA Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment. 1 (2015) 1–49. https://doi.org/10.6092/1970-9870/2883.