The challenges of making ancient cities smart

In 2009, an earthquake devastated L’Aquila, Italy, killing more than three hundred people in this historic mountain town, and displacing 70,000 more.

While rebuilding has been slow, the destruction provided an opportunity to make the urban center a test bed for smart-city innovation. The city administration created a digital transformation strategy, L’Aquila Smart City, and has held public meetings for several years. The Italian government is contributing €16.2M ($17.3M) to fund a public EV charging network, as part of Italy’s 5G trial.

One notable intervention is the Smart Tunnel, a tunnel 3.5 meters under city streets through which water, sewage, light and communications will flow. The tunnel has several advantages: undergrounding cables, ease of access for technicians and expandability.

Since 2014, the Smart Ring project has provided electric buses on demand equipped with air-quality sensors in a five-kilometer circular path around the center. A system of sensors monitors the vulnerability of structures, and the city hopes to implement augmented reality to both provide new levels of information and let people understand the city’s history and phases of reconstruction.

While the destruction provided an opportunity for the city to rethink almost all of its infrastructure, you don’t need to start with a ruin to build a smart urban city, even a beautiful, historic one. Dijon, Nantes, Paris, Hamburg and Barcelona are among the cities implementing intelligent interventions.

Smart Barcelona

Beginning in 2011, Smart City Barcelona has identified and implemented multiple opportunities for enhanced services including transportation, water quality, waste and open government. The city currently has more than 20,000 active sensors that capture temperature, air quality, and mobility data.

Sensors embedded in asphalt show available parking spaces, while smart bus stops offer device charging, free WiFi and digital resources. Stephen Zoegall, Accenture’s global cities, transport and infrastructure industry lead, notes that in historic urban centers, said: “There’s more infrastructure there than you think to begin with.” That includes plenty of dark fiber. “It’s all over the place, so you should make the best use of it.”

That said, Zoegall adds that it’s possible to push a lot of distributed technology to individual units, such as connected cars. “If you’re driving around in a connected EV, it doesn’t need too much of a helping hand from infrastructure.”

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