Smart city and smart building: design, innovation, sustainability and safety

The current century, which opened with the attack on the twin towers and continued with the economic-financial crisis of 2007, the advent of ISIS, the pandemic Covid 19 and the war in Ukraine, has placed us before countless challenges that have produced sudden and repeated changes of scenery. Among these, the most silent, but not for this reason less incisive in everyday reality, appears the phenomenon of urbanization, a process that will undoubtedly have a profound impact on future balances and produce new transformations. 

The challenge of urbanization

Today it is estimated that about 4 billion people live in urban areas, or 54% of the global population, and it is expected that in 2030 it will reach 70%. Cities, therefore, will become the main drivers of economic growth for many countries and, therefore, their efficient reorganization will be a priority for governments in the definition of economic policies. This will inevitably have an impact in many crucial areas, including infrastructure, environmental, social and water and food resources. If cities continue to be chosen as places to seize new and numerous opportunities and opportunities in terms of culture and scientific and technological innovation, This will increase the complexity of the management and reorganisation of processes and the associated needs for finding appropriate and innovative solutions. 

Smart cities

Certainly, to make "future" cities more livable, we need to accelerate the implementation of Smart Cities processes based not only on the increase and installation of new and cutting-edge technologies, but also on well-defined projects that focus on the well-being and security needs of the community, capable of ensuring a sustainable, inclusive and not alienating development that focuses on the real needs of the citizen and his dignity as a human being. It is well to clarify that the city, to earn the widespread and inflated name "smart", must be really able to improve the quality of services and life of those who live there, through a new way of thinking based also on a logic of cooperation and protection of the ecosystem. 

Cities where public space is the common denominator and where technology is put at the service of the community in a healthy and useful way, avoiding that it is dominated by it. This can be achieved if advanced technologies are used in an intelligent way, through the integration of various components and the construction of an organic vision that allows to develop an adequate process of data collection and analysis, to assess the real needs of citizens, the satisfaction of services, the performance of infrastructure and levels of pollution and public safety. This last aspect, in particular, is one of the key elements of the quality of life, the basis on which rests the state of serenity of each individual citizen.

Security

A city is, in fact, livable as safe; it is "smart" if it is mainly "safe", that is, if residents and visitors feel free to live it in its entirety. This explains why it is a priority in the design phase of these new urban realities, to take into account all the many aspects related to safety needs, through the development of interconnected systems, supported by IOT technology and capable of ensuring the prevention of risk scenarios - be they criminal, terrorist, or natural - by balancing equally important needs, of protection of privacy governed by the GDPR General Data Protection Regulation entered into force on 28 May 2018 (EU Regulation 2016/679). 

The document, useful to support the implementation of such infrastructures in order to combine all the various aspects of design, introduces two important expressions - privacy by design and security by design - which represent the change of pace in the construction and organization of these new realities. 

New jobs

It is quite clear that the implementation of such systems requires specific and highly qualified professionals, whose skills make it possible to prepare projects in line with the needs of transformation in place and that in full respect of the protection of privacy of each, introduce systems of capillary control of the territory.

Through the preparation of effective security strategies, and with the help of new technologies and "smart cameras", it is now possible to predict and implement monitoring actions that can prevent or, however, to identify and report in real time any critical issues. These highly sophisticated tools are also able to act as sensors to keep under control both traffic flows - allowing it to be reduced and rationalising public transport services - and air and noise pollution levels, and to act as a support in the organization of other services including, for example, those in the healthcare sector.

Futurist Manifesto

These elements can certainly help to effectively address the needs related to the changes in the current scenario - including the urbanization that is currently the most interesting - by living up to the hypothesis of Antonio Sant'Elia, appeared in the "Manifesto of Futurist Architecture, according to which "every generation must make its own city".

Filippo Romeo, Think Thank Risks and Scenarios