The Trento Experience for the IEEE Smart Cities Initiative
In an increasingly global and urbanized world, the future belongs to smart cities. In the summer 2014 the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the world’s most important organization in the field on electric and electronic engineering, has selected Trento as one of the world’s ten smartest cities within its “Smart cities initiative”. A city is considered smart when it has the capability of using modern technologies (and especially ICT) to provide innovative services to express its full potential and at the same time facilitate citizens’ life. Each city selected by the IEEE’s initiative must develop a project in a specific area; Trento focuses on quality of life. The “IEEE Smart Cities – Trento” project involves the whole Trentino’s ecosystem for innovation. The main actors are the municipality of Trento, the University of Trento the innovation hub Trento RISE and a number of companies and organizations, which have a research lab here. In order to fulfill the expected results, a digital environment and a technological framework is under construction, with the aim to enable the creation of user centred services in the most important fields for quality of life. The most important services are: the provisioning of health services, facilitation of mobility, accelerating bureaucratic procedures, creating services for a better touristic approach, creating a better and more efficient usage of energy, improving the quality of government, with the support of an open approach which would allow to share and reuse data and services (open platform and open data approach).
