Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Smart Energy is another important declination of the intelligent city: for this
reason, in Italy cities like Genoa and Turin have mostly invested on smart elec-
trical grids and Renewable Energy Sources, RES.
The first objective to be reached to create an intelligent city is indeed an
optimized system for the management of Energy resources that are able to put in
motion most of the urban functions. Both public and private transportation can be
managed efficiently as well as waste and water, and of course heat, electrical
energy and data.
Such optimized system must be in most cases, due to the technical features of
the functions to be implemented, based on ICT. New technologies are indeed the
further step to be taken to improve the management of urban processes and as a
result the quality of living of citizens.
The process leading a city in Europe to become smart is accompanied by some
important steps such as undersigning the Covenant of Mayors
3
and designing an
Action Plan for Sustainable Energy
4
: the latter contains the strategic measures that
must be set out to get certain objectives for sustainable development.
1.2
European Smart Cities
The most articulated investigation concerning the smart city is certainly the one
elaborated by the University of technology of Vienna (Giffinger et al.
2008
)in
cooperation with other European research centres, over a sample of 70 middle size
European cities. The researchers of the technical university, together with the
university of Lubiana and the poli-technical university of Delft, have carried out
since 2007 a research about the European Smart Cities, developing a ranking tool
specific for cities with a population below 500.000 inhabitants. The results of the
study, has made a comparison among 70 European cities. The research has started
from the premise that around 40 % of the entire European population lives in small
cities and most of these cities, even though they show a big potential, often stay in
the shade as compared to the larger European cities. The competitive advantage
small cities have and that is often not considered by investors is their limited size,
both in terms of population and in terms of territorial extension, which allows to
easily test new solutions.
(Footnote 2 continued)
Council of 'Europe (CEB). It promotes sustainable urban development and urban regeneration
through financial engineering mechanisms.
3
4
A Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP) is the key document in which the signatory
Administration outlines how it intends to reach its CO
2
reduction target by 2020. It defines the
activities and measures set up to achieve the targets, together with time frames and assigned
responsibilities. Covenant signatories are free to choose the format of their SEAP, as long as it is
in line with the general principles set out in the Covenant SEAP guidelines.
