Tag: smart city

Smart parking as an efficient customer value proposition for smart drivers

Posted on | by Veronica Rafaniello | Leave a Comment on Smart parking as an efficient customer value proposition for smart drivers

Time goes by so fast! I can’t believe it was 2 years ago when I decided to start this distance learning program at MIP Politecnico di Milano, and today we are nearing the end. Behind the difficulties and challenges faced when working and studying simultaneously, needless to say, I will miss this great experience when it’s over. As Henry Ford said in one of his statements, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. The greatest thing in life is to keep the mind young.”

Now it’s time to connect the dots. The ultimate goal of this study program is to inspire and empower students to think big, even when facing minor customer needs. The final project work is organized as teamwork, requiring us to prepare a genuine business plan for a new business concept or start-up. We were asked to create individual project ideas to be presented at a sales pitch event, in front of all our classmates, with the scope to “sell” the most attractive ideas and thereafter to form working groups, based on individual preferences and backgrounds suitable for each project proposal. I was in doubt as to whether to choose a topic in banking and finance, which is my area of expertise or to get out of my comfort zone. I decided on the second option. I had this opportunity to enlarge my knowledge about the ‘smart city’. Despite being a buzzword, the topic has attracted me a lot recently, because of the wide variety of new opportunities it represents for individuals and businesses.

Increasingly, cities are acting on smart digital information and communication technologies to meet many urban challenges such as the environment, good governance, mobility, prosperity and growing population, by several means of collaborating, innovating, saving, integrating, participating and simplifying. Within this huge field of study, I chose to focus my project work on the smart parking platform, part of the city’s smart mobility. Two other classmates volunteered to join the project and together we are still working on the technicalities to define the most appropriate customer value proposition.

Fast emerging technologies such as GPS, IoT, cloud software, wireless sensor networks, radio frequency identification and digital cameras, combined with the wide use of Smartphones, allow for the development of easy wayfinding applications by generating real-time data on the occupancy of parking places. This data can be used by drivers through a mobile application to easily navigate to the nearest available space. On the other hand, this information might be used by the municipality to further optimize the city’s traffic and parking pricing policies. Designing the right value proposition and generating a new business model that fits with the ecosystem are key success factors for entrepreneurs around the world.
When studying the industry and existing technologies, we came across plenty of innovative projects, systems and applications developed to address this topic, but unfortunately, it seems that most of them have not yet been successfully implemented. It seems that very few drivers can really benefit from smart parking around the world. The reason behind this is the fact that each city is different and develops its own smart city vision to meet specific needs and challenges. San Francisco (SFpark) and Los Angeles (LA Express Park) are reported as being two of the most famous successful stories (Lin, Rivano, Le Mouël 2017).

To make a concrete business proposal, we are studying the city of Tirana, the capital of Albania. Although the reported number of vehicles per inhabitant is the lowest in the region, Tirana has the highest population density per square kilometre or five times the average of the country. As there are no or few direct profits linked to the service of smart parking in available parking spaces, our main focus is to reduce capital investments in the choice of smart parking technologies. The main objective of this project work will be to improve and facilitate the driver’s experience when parking in public spaces by using information gathered by users, with the scope to reduce investment cost. Among other technologies, we are assessing some emerging parking information dissemination systems, such as crowdsensing, peer-to-peer communication, multi-agent systems, parking meter networks, etc.

The new term ‘crowdsensing’ has emerged to present those smart parking applications, which are using crowdsourcing as a tool to gather parking information from Smartphone users. The accuracy of the information will rely on the drivers’ participation. Further, some algorithms like fuzzy logic and time series might be used to predict parking occupancy information based on historical or sample data, to improve the accuracy of information provided to participating users. The capital investment, in this case, is very minimal as there is no need for hardware installations or maintenance. But the challenge is how to motivate drivers and persuade them to participate, to update occupancy details of parking spaces every time they park their vehicle, by designing and proposing the most valuable and efficient value proposition to the city’s smart drivers.

 

About the author
 Elivar Golemi

Elivar Golemi is an Albanian candidate at MIP International Flex EMBA. She is working as an Executive Director in the dairy industry, after a long experience in the banking system. Skilled in Financial Analyses, Risk Management and Internal Audit. Nature lover, passionate photographer and mountain climber.

 

 

A stroll in the city of the future  

Posted on | by albe@mip.polimi.it | Leave a Comment on A stroll in the city of the future  

Sustainable, connected, shared. In a word, smart. This is the future to which a city like Milan, among the most cutting-edge cities in Europe, is looking. And this is the horizon that all urban centres, big or small, must look towards in coming years. The idea of a smart city, a city that thanks to technologies and innovation becomes more efficient, more ecological and even more democratic, is becoming increasingly tangible.

«When I think of a smart city, I think of a group of communities that co-exist and participate in the life of the city thanks to different forms of sharing», explains Davide Chiaroni, Director Corporate Relations at MIP Politecnico di Milano.  «We’ll witness a paradigm change that will impact all services and, as a result, will also change our mentality a little bit: we’ll get used to greater sharing and participation. Smart cities, in essence, will be the cities of Millennials and digital natives».

These cities will also be able to provide an adequate architectural response to changed work contexts. «Many buildings were designed based on needs that have now changed and that will change even more in the future: the growing digitalization of services, which will give an even greater impetus to smart working, will for example make many large offices obsolete. The smart city, instead, is based on the idea of so-called “circular” buildings, buildings designed considering that the end use can change in a short time. In other words, it will be a flexible city for flexible work», says Chiaroni.

Flexibility also involves the issue of mobility, which must address the double challenge of environmental sustainability and the extensiveneness of the service: «Milan is focusing a lot on setting up an electric fleet for public transport. And autonomous driving will revolutionize the conception we have of the automobile: no longer a private good but a public and shared service», explains Chiaroni. From this perspective, some experiments have proven to be quite useful for gathering data and better planning traffic flows: «The gates of Area B (Milan’s limited traffic area closed to the most polluting vehicles) will be invaluable for measuring traffic volumes and understanding in what areas to intervene and how to do it».

In short, the smart city revolution is at hand. However, some pieces are still missing, starting with energy: «Cities aren’t yet able to rely solely on clean and renewable energies. There are limits to storage, which must be overcome, but that’s the right direction», explains Chiaroni. It shouldn’t be concealed that the development of a smart city also comes with some problems. «Numerous studies concur that the smart city has positive economic repercussions. But not all actors involved in this process come out ahead». And it’s here that politics comes into play:  «The smart city will change the nature of work.  It’s inevitable to think that older people in society will be hit by this. Politics will play a role in compensating for these gaps, in the face of a balance that is nonetheless positive».

The School of Management of Politecnico di Milano aims to train people for the most suitable professions to manage these processes: «I have in mind a sort of control room that deals with the design of services, that is able to develop a road map, that’s not made up of technicians, but of managers that know which technologies should be exploited. Our school offers future managers dual know-how: management and technological. We’re convinced that one can’t do without the other. Planning isn’t enough: you also need to think of the practical effects», concludes Chiaroni.