By: Dario Petri, University of Trento, Italy; IEEE International Smart Cities Conference 2016 Chair

A global trend towards urbanization is placing increased emphasis on making the world's cities more livable. Diverse efforts are underway to accomplish this goal, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Smart Cities Initiative.

The speed of urbanization adds urgency to the IEEE Smart Cities effort. Half of the world's population currently lives in cities and, by 2050, two-thirds of the world's nearly 10 billion people will be city dwellers, according to United Nations forecasts.

The IEEE Smart Cities Initiative has established that the increasing capacity and decreasing the cost of information and communications technology (ICT) – and the creation of user-driven data accessible by citizens – can help optimize services and improve the quality and sustainability of urban life. The IEEE Smart Cities Initiative supports such developments and the city of Trento, Italy, illustrates the opportunities and challenges.

In 2014, the initiative selected Trento, as well as Guadalajara, Mexico, and Wuxi, China, as the first three IEEE core smart cities. Each city is mandated to host global smart city-related conferences and share their work and lessons learned with the world through publications and online educational tools.

Trento's case illustrates IEEE's smart city process and progress.

Trento: historic and future-oriented   

Trento and its 116,000 inhabitants stretch along the Adige River valley, a historic gateway between northern Italy and the rest of Europe, which contributed to Trento's historic prosperity and its engaged citizenry.

Trento's picturesque Medieval and Renaissance architecture serves as a backdrop for an enviable quality of life-based on an existing ecosystem of leading universities and research centers linked with an active public-private sector in pursuit of job creation and economic development.

As an IEEE core smart city, Trento is capitalizing on these strengths to address its challenges in becoming an even more vibrant and sustainable city, with lessons for cities elsewhere. Over the past two years, this goal has led Trento to evaluate and optimize critical aspects of city life.

Common themes

The city's inaugural smart city conference in December 2014 helped hone its focus on six areas: Big Data/Open Data, Energy Systems, Fostering Smart Mobility for Mid-sized Cities, Innovative Tourism Services, Smart Citizens for Healthy Cities and e-Government. These topics are addressed in five white papers.

Though data, energy, mobility and tourism sound like disparate subjects, these topics are linked by a few common civic and technology themes.

Trento's smart city efforts will rely on an integrated ICT platform that leverages the value of data to support advancements in the city's energy, transportation, health, business, and tourism sectors. Trento's approach recognizes that data on urban life is created by and belongs to citizens and visitors. "Open data" means that citizens have ready access to information that makes e-government more transparent. The city embraces the value of an engaged citizenry, essential to creating a user-centric design for how services can be accessed and put to use.

For instance, information on transportation alternatives such as ride-sharing and bike-sharing and bus wait times is intended to improve the use of public mobility options. And Trento's pursuit of a smarter power grid based on active end-user engagement will support energy efficiency, the use of distributed energy resources (DER) and broader European Union goals for energy sustainability.

More recently, in September 2016, Trento hosted the IEEE Second International Smart Cities conference, 12-15 September 2016 during the Trento Smart City Week 2016 event. The event involved thousands of people and it offered citizens, stakeholders, and local companies the opportunity to share experiences as well as to join the IEEE smart cities community. In fact, Trento is extending the "smart communities" paradigm to the entire Trento Province (about 538,000 inhabitants) through common policies and outreach to citizens in rural areas.

Six focus areas

Trento's six focus areas illustrate its practical steps towards improving urban quality of life. For instance, to meet the demands of Big Data and Open Data, the city must unify a formerly fragmented administrative IT structure and empower an open data culture across the province of Trentino. (See, also, Trento's MOOC (massive open online courses) on Big Data for Smart Cities.) To realize Future Energy Systems in Smart Cities, Trento will build a smarter electric grid that encourages smart buildings, electric vehicles, DER and empowers "prosumers" who both produce and consume energy. To foster Smart Mobility for Mid-sized Cities, Trento must address its north-south alignment along a river valley, where a river, a railroad and major roads impede cross-town mobility. In developing Innovative Tourism Services Trento will create an end-to-end tourism ecosystem and monitor guest-generated social media to hone its approach. The city's concept of Smart Citizens for Healthy Cities takes "health" beyond mere physical well-being to encompass social, economic and informational opportunities to ensure that all segments of Trentino Province enjoy equal access to resources. e-Government focuses on a "one-stop shop" access for citizens to municipal data and information on city services.

Trento's journey

As I mentioned, Trento had already taken practical steps toward an improved, sustainable civic life when it was selected by the IEEE Smart Cities initiative for attention and support. Today, two years into its journey, Trento is on its way to quantifiable, sustainable improvements in major areas of civic, social and economic life. Its efforts honor its motto: Qualità dela vita e impegno attivo e consapevole dei cittadini – "quality of life, active and aware engagement of citizens."