Smart city project in Ljubljana shopping and business centre designed to follow its Green Mission strategy
Air pollution is one of the major environmental risks to health. According to a report from the World Health Organisation (WHO) cutting down gases and pollutants emissions can reduce the burden of hearth and respiratory diseases like stroke, lung cancer and asthma.
In fact, this pollution generated by vehicles, industries and energy production kills 800,000 people annually, says the Health and Environment Linkages Initiative.
Noise pollution is the second cause of illness for environmental reasons after air pollution in Europe. Traffic congestion, civil works or industry in urban areas impact adversely exposing people to high sound levels. This exposure can increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases and also high blood pressure.
Ljubljana, Slovenia
BTC City is one of the largest shopping and business centres in Europe located in Ljubljana, the 2016 European Green Capital. It has entrusted SmartIS City Ltd., a company that provides digital transformation solutions for cities and municipalities, and Libelium to develop a project to improve its environmental and social commitment.
Ambient and environmental conditions monitoring
Many worldwide cities are following environmental standards to reduce the number of illnesses induced by air pollution and to lower emissions. These cities are changing their attitude towards the environment and, above all, taking action. For that reason, they need to detect the problems and respond with green projects installing wireless sensor networks.
The BTC City Shopping Centre smart city project is based on Waspmote Plug & Sense! Sensor Platform. It has been installed in the BTC City shopping area in Ljubljana to control ambient conditions and air pollution.
The devices and sensors installed are:
-
Waspmote Plug & Sense! Ambient Control:
- Luminosity
- Temperature and humidity
-
Waspmote Plug & Sense! Smart Cities:
- Luminosity
- Noise
- Ultrasound distance
-
Waspmote Plug & Sense Smart Environment PRO:
- Temperature, humidity and air pressure
- CO
- O3
- NO
- NO2
The information collected by the sensors is sent to Meshlium IoT Gateway through 868 protocol, which requires to locate sensors within a radius of 500 meters. The communication among the SmartCityPlatform and the IoT Gateway has been carried out via Wi-Fi.
SmartCityPlatform is designed for digital transformation of cities. It serves cities as a smart governance tool and a big data market place and creates value for future city development. The platform enables better management of urban, socio-economic and technological development of the city helping city leaders to make better decisions and to create green cities as better places for living.
Green solution to achieve social commitment
The goals of this project has been aligned with sustainable goals of the City of Ljubljana. In words of the mayor, Zoran Janković, at Ljubljana Forum 2016 Future of Cities conference: “More cities should adapt the vision of green cities and work towards providing best services for their citizens.”
“We have created a BTC City Living Lab Digital Platform, which is transforming not only shopping industry and creating new value for local businesses and their customers, but holds prospect for transforming management of cities as well,” said Julij Božič, chief innovation and digital officer at BTC.
Comment on this article below or via Twitter @IoTGN