Needs

The municipality of Bari has expressed the need to have a single monitoring tool capable of effectively guiding and verifying strategic and operational decisions for the well-being and safety of the citizen. Although the administration had large amounts of data from different areas of life and the city environment, this was isolated information in the possession of heterogeneous and non-communicating bodies.

Exprivia Solution

The project provides for the aggregation and cohesion of these data, structured and unstructured, on a single web dashboard (Urban Control Center) made available to the Administration. The information obtained is displayed on the map of the city itself, thus offering a graphic interface that is immediately understandable for everyone. The solution was created by a Temporary Grouping of Companies formed by Exprivia, Links and IBM.

“The M.U.S.I.C.A. project – explains Angelo Tomasicchio, Councillor for Technological Innovation of the Municipality of Bari – is part of an overall vision that sees the municipal administration and the Technological Innovation Department concretely engaged in breaking down the digital divide, developing innovation and continuously searching for the best way to communicate directly with citizens”

“Collecting and managing the data produced by the City is only a first step – says Felice Vitulano, Director of the Innovation Office of Exprivia – The challenge is to create a nervous system of the city capable of making it connected, resilient and increasingly closer to the needs of the citizen, able to suggest the right actions to be taken based on the situations that may arise”

Three areas were taken into consideration: citizen well-being, environment and energy efficiency, and safety.

Data acquisition

The strength of the solution is that it is always able to aggregate data from heterogeneous sources. In this case, the information was acquired from:

• internal data sources of the Municipality of Bari: Municipal Police, Registry, SIT Heritage and Public Assets, Technological Innovation Division, Information Systems and TLC;
• data sources external to the Municipality of Bari and private: Istat, Arpa, AMIU, AMGAS, Enel, AQP and Amtab;
• various infrastructures connected to the system, such as security cameras and the BaSolve application;
• unstructured data sources such as the social pages of the Municipality, the Mayor, and local newspapers and the Municipality of Bari OpenData Portal.

The well-being of the citizen

The evaluation of a citizen-friendly city passes through three important factors:

• mapping of urban green areas;
• calculation of the illumination rate;
• quality of public transport.

Through monitoring, it will be possible to intelligently evaluate the maintenance or expansion of public green areas; monitor the performance, durability, failure rate of all lighting fixtures in the city; know exactly the number of trips and public transport, with a detailed view of the areas more or less served with respect to population density.

Safety

Through the censuses of the reports drawn up by the municipal police, it is possible to create a safety map and classify the neighborhoods according to the type and time of intervention carried out. In this way, it becomes easier to understand when and where to provide greater support from the police, ensuring greater security for citizens.

Through data from social networks, on the other hand, the possibility of carrying out a sentiment analysis is exploited to assess the perception of security in the city and the most important topics that animate the city debate.

Environment and energy efficiency

The integration of Arpa data with weather and pollutant stations makes it possible to monitor the level of pollution with data updated every hour. When this level exceeds the threshold allowed by law, the administration can evaluate any actions to limit smog such as closing it to traffic or establishing limited traffic zones.

The integration of data provided by the Apulian Aqueduct, Amgas and Enel also makes it possible to monitor electricity, water and heat consumption by aggregation of census sections. It is thus possible to obtain the calculation of the C02 emitted and understand any waste or energy dispersion, evaluating any targeted interventions.

Results

M.U.S.I.C.A. was recognized as the best project in the field of ‘Smart city, data and Internet of Things’ at the ’10×10=100 projects to change the PA Award’, promoted by the PA Forum 2017 and won as Best Practice at the European Public Sector Award (EPSA) 2017, promoted by the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA).

In the first six months of the start of the project, it was possible to provide the municipal police with a clear map of the areas with the highest concentration of thefts, accidents, reports of potholes and fires.

The goal is to make the platform open to an increasing number of data and information collected, to have a complete picture of the city. For example, it will be possible to exploit the information from images collected with smart cameras for a more in-depth security analysis. Or use the potential offered by 5G networks, which will make cities increasingly connected, to help administrations make operational decisions on traffic, safety and mobility even in real time.