Planning & Open-Air Demonstrating Smart City Sustainable Districts

Abstract

The article is focused on the “demonstration” activities carried out by the University of Genoa at Savona Campus facilities in order to implement the “Living Lab Smart City”. The idea is to transform the Savona Campus in a Living Lab of the City of the Future: smart technologies in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and energy sectors were installed in order to show a real application of the Smart City concept to population and external stakeholders. Moreover, special attention was given to the environment, personal wellbeing, and social equalities. The sustainable energy Research Infrastructures (RIs) of Savona Campus allowed enhancement of the applied research in degree programs and the collaboration with several companies. In particular, an important partnership with the Italian electric Distribution System Operator (DSO), ENEL S.p.A., started in 2017 to test the capability of these RIs to operate disconnected from the National Grid, relying only on the supply of renewables and storage systems. The “Living Lab Smart City” is an important action to reduce the carbon footprint of the Savona Campus and to increase the awareness of students, teachers and researchers towards Sustainable Development in Higher Education Institutes.

A Building Energy Management System Based on an Equivalent Electric Circuit Model

“…The developed BEMS is applied to a real case study represented by the Smart Energy Building (SEB) at the Savona Campus of the University of Genoa (Liguria Region, north-west Italy) [27]. This section reports the description of the building and the experimental validation of the simulation model.…”

“…The SEB, Figure 4, is an environmentally sustainable building connected to a microgrid (called Smart Polygeneration Microgrid [27]) as a "prosumer" and is equipped with renewable power plants and characterized by energy efficiency measures. • The auxiliary variables referred to the room temperature ( 1 , k t z ) and to the storage temperature ( 2 , k t z ) used to linearize the fan coil constraint (19).…”

“…On the other hand, the constraints of the problem include the mathematical model developed to simulate the dynamic thermal behavior of the building, based on an equivalent electric circuit approach. The model has been validated on a smart building of the Savona Campus of the University of Genoa [27].…”

The Importance of Education to achieve Sustainable Social Development

“…Este contexto histórico ha invitado a que se realicen reflexiones e interpretaciones sobre el Desarrollo Sostenible (Sonetti, Brown & Naboni, 2019, Fedosejeva, Bocê, Romanova, Illisko y Ivanova, 2018, cuyo principal objetivo es impulsar que el desarrollo histórico de la sociedad se lleve a cabo sin depredar el medioambiente, logrando mantener los niveles de crecimiento económico y supuesto desarrollo social (Bracco, Delfino, Laiolo & Morini, 2018, Mion, Broglia & Bonfanti, 2019. Desafortunadamente, este concepto ha quedado vaciado de contenido (Cockburn, Palmer, Biggs & Rosenberg, 2018) en tanto que terminó adjetivando los diversos procesos de acumulación de capital y de subsunción formal y real del proceso de trabajo por el capital (Luna-Nemecio, 2019).…”

Sustainable Development and Higher Education: Acting with a Purpose

“…These new ways are conducted on campus, in networks among universities, within relations between the city and the university, and in challenges within cities themselves [2][3][4]. Bracco et al [5] write about organising in Living Labs on a campus in Genoa. They describe promising achievements on energy (self-)generation and waste collection as well as recycling.…”