Francesca Pagliaro

A territorial based strategy for the distribution of sensor networks in smart cities

Nowadays land governance has to keep up with sudden environmental and social transformations of cities. Therefore it is necessary to improve the exchange of real-time information among different stakeholders. One of the solutions is to acquire data not only by Remote Sensing, but also by sensor networks distributed on the territory. In this way information are developed with multiple connections and a smarter management of cities can be achieved. However there are not strategies for the distribution of the sensors yet and it often takes to an excess of not interrelated data. Therefore it is important to design the networks according to the features of the territory in which they are distributed. This aim can be achieved with the study of infrastructural, cultural and functional aspects of the cities. The goal of this paper is to define a method to plan an optimized distribution of sensors in the city based on the analysis of characteristics and relations among urban zones.

A roadmap toward the development of Sapienza Smart Campus

University campuses are comparable to cities, despite the differences in dimension and kind of structures. The Smart City model can be scaled and adapted to them in order to create a Smart Campus. In this framework the research project SC2 is based on an integrated Smart planning in order to reach this goal. The strength of the project is its methodological approach characterized by 5 key points: planning, integration and collaboration, flexibility and scalability. SC2 is the starting point to transform universities and single urban elements using a framework which can be extended and scaled to different urban contexts.

A quantitative evaluation of the mutual influences among Smart strategies applied at district level

Cities play an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving energy efficiency. The Smart City concept, applied at different territorial levels, is one of most famous frameworks for improving the performance of cities. Smart planning models should allow to identify solutions in a coordinated and holistic way. Starting from these considerations, in this paper the authors focused on the quantitative evaluation of the mutual influences among Smart strategies applied at district level. An ideal sustainable district was analyzed and two improved scenarios (Smart interventions on buildings and green areas) were carried out. The aim is to evaluate if and to what extent these actions would have an impact form energy, environment end economy points of view compared to the base case scenario. Simulation results of the three scenarios show significant differences from energy, environmental and economic perspectives.

CFD Analysis of Urban Canopy Flows Employing the V2F Model: Impact of Different Aspect Ratios and Relative Heights

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is currently used in the environmental field to simulate flow and dispersion of pollutants around buildings. However, the closure assumptions of the turbulence usually employed in CFD codes are not always physically based and adequate for all the flow regimes relating to practical applications. The starting point of this work is the performance assessment of the V2F (i.e.,  − f) model implemented in Ansys Fluent for simulating the flow field in an idealized array of two-dimensional canyons. The V2F model has been used in the past to predict low-speed and wall-bounded flows, but it has never been used to simulate airflows in urban street canyons. The numerical results are validated against experimental data collected in the water channel and compared with other turbulence models incorporated in Ansys Fluent (i.e., variations of both k-e and k-ω models and the Reynolds stress model). The results show that the V2F model provides the best prediction of the flow field for two flow regimes commonly found in urban canopies. The V2F model is also employed to quantify the air-exchange rate (ACH) for a series of two-dimensional building arrangements, such as step-up and step-down configurations, having different aspect ratios and relative heights of the buildings. The results show a clear dependence of the ACH on the latter two parameters and highlight the role played by the turbulence in the exchange of air mass, particularly important for the step-down configurations, when the ventilation associated with the mean flow is generally poor.

Sapienza smart campus: From the matrix approach to the applicative analysis of an optimized garbage collection system

University campuses can be developed and improved through the application of the Smart concept. Previous researches have proposed a Smart Campus model based on incidence matrices in order to choice suitable integrated strategies. This methodological framework has been applied on the headquarter of Sapienza, University of Rome. The winner strategy resulting from the Environmental evaluation has been numerically simulated and the results have shown their impacts in terms of energy, environmental and economic perspectives.

A GIS-Based Model for the Analysis of Ecological Connectivity

A model for the calculation of Potential Ecological Network at regional level has been presented in this paper. Through the use of GIS techniques and Natural Protected Areas and Land Use Map GIS datasets, the proposed model links two Ecological Network approaches (Species-Specific and Land Units) using the Least - Cost Path (LCP) algorithm. The nodes of the Ecological Potential Network have been analyzed using the Graph Theory. Specific GIS workflows have been set up to model the ecological connectivity in problematic mapping conditions, such as under road bridges and on the riverbanks. The main workflow requires a rasterization of the input datasets to allow the LCP algorithm application. The variations of the pixel resolution have been analyzed in terms of accuracy of the output and computation time of the model. The results underline an emerging property of Potential Ecological Networks, the Secondary Nodes, which are a set of nodes at the intersection of Linkages built by the LCP algorithm.