Gadgetory

the port city of Messina in Sicily has rebuilt its churches and homes after destructive earthquakes and wars that date back to before the Roman Empire but this ancient town is transforming itself into a city of the future and in the process beating Silicon Valley at its own game I've come to Mussina's town swear to watch the popular noon bell tower show my tour guide is University of Messina professor Antonio Puglia people but he's given me a tour of a future city I point at the church without changing practically deposition the system realized that this is the main church and provides the information on the church itself I'm getting a glimpse of an experiment of smart men it's a university led effort to try to transform Messina and other Sicilian towns like Catania into the smartest of the smart cities so what does it mean to be a smart connected city this is Sicily after all not Silicon Valley and there aren't a bunch of delivery drones or self-driving cars and we thought yeah but Sicily does have sensors lots of them in lots of places they're tucked away in some parking lots bus stop streetlights and buildings this is one of the boxes that we have distributed in the city about 35 of these boxes that you can see us on the map the idea is to build from the ground up a citywide network of sensors including tapping into the ones in people's phones we want to use the same unifying technology to dialogue and interact with all of these objects the data like temperature and whether a taxi is nearby can then be used to make life better in the city more efficient for example there's a camera in the airport that shows if it's crowded so you can decide if you need more time to get through security there is a thermal camera inside that trust me to real-time information that you will see also on the website of what money there's also an app for mapping potholes so the city can make quicker repairs so this phone just recorded a pothole this map here real-time actually shows you where the pothole was reported what time and if enough of them get reported then the city will go and fix it there's a prototype of a smart garbage bin that can tell the city it needs emptying when the trash reaches a certain level there's a solar-powered bus stop that charges your phone monitors air quality and tracks traffic pattern do the buses get better and make the buses better you can find an open parking space in reserve it while we are driving then if we decide to park there app will indicate the available parking place in your Bible we are so we can reserve and they will drive us to the place the technology is magnetic sensor that is developed with the components produced by STMicroelectronics now I know what machine is doing may sound a little familiar after all you've probably already used an app to hail a ride or to pay for parking but this is one of the first times that someone's really tried to bring it all together the key is all the open data from the sensors and the resulting services are accessible through a single site that's where smart may is ahead of the game so one single access point that can be used and personalized it person by person so in that case I really believe that it would be part of our normal life and people will realize that they can really live better the project already has partners including chip makers developers and the government smart may is still in the prototype phase but they've proven they can make it work we have now this kind of technology we have this kind is level of knowledge in our university and also because our national government has decided only now to put the money in this field the local government has committed about 13 million euros to tech projects like smart cities now they have to get ordinary people to buy into it so you have to convince them that this service can really improve their life so they are in some sense force or obliged to use these services as a something normal one problem is that less than a fifth of residents are using their phones to access city services this also seems like a massive privacy scandal just waiting to happen though it's something the team says they're mindful of but despite these hurdles Messina and Catania are pulling ahead in the smart city race many bigger cities are taking a more conservative approach by focusing on individual projects instead of connecting an entire city Chicago is digitally mapping its underground to prevent construction accidents while Louisville is using sensors to listen for nearby alarms to respond to fires quick the fact is it's challenging to make big changes in a big city you have to make some choices you can't do it where is it that you have the maximum impact how do you make when you talk about it relevant to people and not threatening but welcoming and that's what workin still it's odd that in Silicon Valley the cities that house Facebook Google Apple and Twitter haven't yet become futuristic connected cities sure there are driverless cars and you can use your phone to pay for parking meters but there's no single way to access at all so why is this place in the edge of Sicily on the verge of becoming one of the world's first truly smart cities well one reason is the government which is going to spend millions of euros and political capital and make it happen the other is that technology is better than it's ever been but it's not a guaranteed success if people don't use this then it's kind of a loss but that's not going to stop them from trying you