Vision and aims

The main challenge of Smart Cities is to adopt an integrated approach to find synergies among existing urban services, infrastructures and resources, and overcome the traditional segmentation of utilities, with the final purpose of providing integrated and cost-effective smart services to the citizens. This applies to network for distribution of resources (e. g., energy, water) as well as to communication networks but also to devices and services that can be owned by private companies (utility companies, telecommunication operators, service providers, etc.) and municipalities.

The vision of ALMANAC is to develop a comprehensive platform that enables the definition of an integrated Smart City information system for green and sustainable Smart City applications. This includes the creation of business models based on public-private partnerships, combining business needs with governance requirements as well as active citizen engagement.

In terms of network infrastructure, ALMANAC will ensure interoperability by supporting authorised data flows among private and/or public networks originally designed to achieve specific goals, therefore characterised by heterogeneous architectures, technologies, performance, architecture and policies.

ALMANAC will enable communication interoperability among devices, sub-systems, existing urban services and external service providers allowing them to operate coherently in response to the Smart City application requirements.

ALMANAC expects service level interoperability by allowing different developers to design and implement Smart City applications through a common set of tools and open, possibly cloud-based, interfaces.

Three prototypes

Development work in ALMANAC will be based on smart city applications in the City of Torino and is divided into three prototype stages.

The first prototype will be an information gathering platform with data collected in real-time from large amounts of Smart City sensors and objects. The prototype will provide proof-of-concept interoperability with Smart City applications over the internet.

The second prototype will extend the capillary network into the network layer through the M2M management components and provide end-to-end data management to the Smart City applications.

The third prototype will be a fully operational prototype adding fully scalable and secure data management capabilities provided by the Data Management Framework.

Torino Smart City

The City of Torino joined the Covenant of Mayors in 2009 and increased efforts to be recognised as a ‘smart city’ in 2011, when  it, as one of the first Italian cities, engaged itself to elaborate an Action Plan for Energy to reduce its CO2 emissions by more than 20% by 2020.

ALMANAC performs proof-of-concept implementations and evaluations in Torino, providing solutions for waste management, water supply and citizen engagement.

The results from ALMANAC will  be used to evaluate and eventually re-design and improve the city’s waste management and water supply services.