The Need of Multidisciplinary Approaches and Engineering Tools for the Development and Implementation of the Smart City Paradigm

This paper is motivated by the concept that the successful, effective, and sustainable implementation of the smart city paradigm requires a close cooperation among researchers with different, complementary interests and, in most cases, a multidisciplinary approach. It first briefly discusses how such a multidisciplinary methodology, transversal to various disciplines such as architecture, computer science, civil engineering, electrical, electronic and telecommunication engineering, social science and behavioral science, etc., can be successfully employed for the development of suitable modeling tools and real solutions of such sociotechnical systems. Then, the paper presents some pilot projects accomplished by the authors within the framework of some major European Union (EU) and national research programs, also involving the Bologna municipality and some of the key players of the smart city industry. Each project, characterized by different and complementary approaches/modeling tools, is illustrated along with the relevant contextualization and the advancements with respect to the state of the art

Telecommunication Systems Enabling Real Time Navigation

Traffic is one of the most important problems in industrialized countries: roads are getting more and more crowded, especially during rush hours, with heavy consequences on people\u2019s quality of life, accidents, pollution, and fuel consumption. The transmission of up-to-date traffic information to on-board navigators would allow the redistribution of traffic flows over alternative routes, thus reducing road congestions and slowdowns. In this paper we investigate the possibility to send the information on the average-speed in any road of interest to on-board navigators by means of current broadcast and unicast communication technologies. A discussion on the most convenient transmission strategy will also be given with reference to real scenarios