The smart city: Enel X and City Analytics

City Analytics is a platform that makes it possible to plan city infrastructure and services based on real demand. Our  solution integrates and analyzes information from connected devices, Enel X solutions installed in the city, Open Data and from the many sources of Big Data available today -- all in full accordance with privacy legislation. By taking full advantage of public and private infrastructures to gather data, it supplies the information administrators require to offer a wide range of smart city services and make the right decisions on the basis of actual demand.

City Analytics offers an accurate  answer to questions about movement of both people and vehicles around the urban area in question. This means that the authorities (and people too) have the information they need to make the right decisions about routing public transport, catering to visitors and ensuring that infrastructure is in the right place for the number of people that want to use it at a given time. Traffic choke-points can be identified and action taken smooth flows, and predictions made about future behavior.

City Analytics shone during the emergency when we used the data to create a dashboard showing the way people’s movements varied in national, regional and municipal areas. The City Analytics Covid-19 – Mobility Map, dashboard was based on analysis of anonymized and aggregated data from vehicles, maps and navigation systems, and was free to access for citizens wanting to see the effects of the travel containment and social distancing measures adopted in response to the emergency.

The Mobility Map was developed in partnership with advanced digital mapping specialist HERE Technologies and it is operative in Spain, Italy and Brazil.

In more normal times, City Analytics is a means of monitoring attendance and mobility flows in a given area, analyzing attendance figures and estimating crowd provenance at events such as during the ePrix in Rome’s EUR district. On that occasion it showed where racegoers had come from and their means of travel, allowing the city to offer services on the basis of real demand, organize public transport more efficiently and ensure the safety of the crowd.

City Analytics offers city administrations the information required to oversee events taking place in their areas, gathering, anonymizing and aggregating the data needed to monitor and analyze attendance, and work out mobility flows.

The service can also be used to highlight the busiest routes of city transportation systems, analyzing peak times and passenger origins and destinations, as well as visits to the city’s key locations, which is how it is being used in Genoa, for example. City Analytics is also being used to monitor Genoa’s metro system usage and to address service planning accordingly. Here and in other cities, it can offer an overview of the working of the transportation system, tracking the distribution of passenger flows -- in other words, analyzing who goes where, how, and at what time. 

After analysis, the data is used to inform decisions on ways public transportation can be optimized based on actual demand, as well as the effectiveness of specific actions.

But the beauty of Enel X’s City Analytics is that the Big Data that’s generated can be used by administrations to improve their decision-making and planning in many areas. This has great benefits for the quality of urban life.

City Analytics supplies the information needed for a city to become a smart, sustainable city, offering residents, commuters and visitors innovative solutions that will improve their daily lives.