The Politecnico for "Torino City Lab"

Following the European Commission’s broad definition of “Smart City”- i.e.“smart” economy, people, governance, environment, living - the Politecnico di Torino plays a leading role at the national and international level on all issues concerning smart cities, both in the multidisciplinary innovation required by the close connection between citizens and new technologies in various fields, as well as in the training of new professionals able to manage the complexity of smart cities.

In this perspective, the institutional collaboration between the City of Turin and the Politecnico on many of these issues is well established and is based on common project experiences:  "Torino City Lab", whose objectives include the creation of economic development policies that exploit innovation and new technologies to bring new opportunities to the city, has been presented. The Politecnico di Torino will develop case studies and multidisciplinary research that contribute to making Turin a “smart city", focusing in particular on issues related to policy making and social innovation, mobility, reduction of energy consumption of buildings and, more generally, the quality of life of the inhabitants with a view to low carbon dioxide emissions; the University will also be able to provide technical support in various areas (e.g. building energy analysis, emissions monitoring) and provide technical support for monitoring trials in the local area and innovative technological solutions of public interest that will be tested on the metropolitan area of the City of Turin, pooling specific knowledge and skills and thus promoting the efficiency of the actions for the benefit of the community.

The agreement for Torino City Lab provides for another activity of the University: the assessment of the economic, social and environmental impacts of the technological trials on user and citizen communities and the development of business support and partner network studies for the definition of business models and financing systems aimed at ensuring the long-term sustainability of the trial initiatives on the city’s territory. Further opportunities may come from European, national and regional projects focused on the Smart Cities issue, in which the Politecnico may involve the Municipality of Turin, as well as the activities of two interdepartmental centres of the University, i.e. the Energy Center, in which the City of Turin already participates as a member of the Advisory Board, and Full, "The Future Urban Legacy Lab”.

Finally, the activities of Politecnico will be focused in particular on the digitisation of the city, on mobility and on drone technology. These actions will be carried out as part of the research activity of three other interdepartmental centres: SmartData@PoliTO - Big Data and Data Science Laboratory, CARS@PoliTO - Center for Automotive Research and Sustainable Mobility and  PIC4SeR - PoliTO Interdepartmental Centre for Service Robotics. In particular, on the topic of mobility, the “Torino City Lab” initiative will be included in the context of the platform of the Knowledge Innovation Community U-Move initiative, a financing proposal under consideration by the European Institute of Technology, which combines research centres and companies for the study of sustainable and inclusive transport solutions for a new concept of urban mobility and which sees the Politecnico as the leader of Southern Europe and the City of Turin as a partner city.