- This free interactive map, developed by Enel X, measures the availability of services and quality of life in Italian cities
Rome, December 14th, 2021 – The "15 Minute City Index" is designed to provide public administrations with detailed, up-to-date information, together with the tools to analyze it and identify any priority action areas. Enel X's Innovability unit developed this new free, interactive map with scientific support from the University of Florence. The "15 Minute City Index” is unique in an international context and measures the degree to which the micro-districts of each Italian city adhere to the 15-Minute City's proximity urban planning model. Using Open Data collected from institutional portals, satellite imagery and open source communities, Enel X's new tool provides information about the quality of life in Italian cities, giving a detailed snapshot, both geographically and by sector. Each city is divided into micro-districts where the quality and accessibility of 13 service categories are analyzed: Environment, Economy, Fast Mobility, Soft Mobility, Housing, Health, Food, Education, Public Offices, Security, Culture and Worship, Entertainment and Sport.
The 15-minute city is a sustainable city model where urban spaces and services are accessible to citizens within a 15-minute walk from home. Promoted by the European Commission Joint Programming Initiative's Driving Urban Transition to a Sustainable Future framework, this urban model reduces city travel, traffic and pollution, while allowing people to regain their commuting time and improve their quality of life. The “15 Minute City Index” uses aggregated, rigorous, nationwide data to measure adherence to the 15-minute city model quantitatively. This indicator was developed by Enel X as a tool to support urban planning, both for ex-ante measures (identifying successful examples in a given area and replicating them in places with similar starting conditions) and evaluating them ex-post (measuring the actual effectiveness of a measure and possibly recalibrating its scope).
For each municipality, the index is able to provide precise indications on the needs of the resident population, allowing for example to support evaluations for the planning of any interventions related to mobility (where and how to build a cycle path, where to move a bus stop) or health protection (incentives for the construction of hospitals or pharmacies in uncovered areas) taking into account key factors such as population density and environmental dimension.
Francesco Venturini, CEO of Enel X, said: “The development of the 15 Minute City Index is another important step towards the goal of urban sustainability. It's a challenging goal that Enel X wants to contribute to, not only with its technological solutions but also by providing scientifically-based analytical tools like this. The aim is to simplify the use of Open Data to provide the community with scientifically validated indicators that support administrations in their actions.”
The tool will be available starting from December 14th on Enel X Yourban, Enel X’s portal reserved for Public Administrations. It will be possible to browse the "15 Minute City Index” and its 13 subsections, city by city, micro-district by micro-district. For further information and to consult the index, visit: https://www.enelx.com/it/it/istituzioni/sostenibilita/15-minutes-city-index?ecid=Display-PressRelease-IT_eCity_2021_IT-link15min-CircularCityIndex
The index is a new stage in Enel X's long path to develop digital solutions for cities. Last year, as part of “City Analytics”, a digital Big Data Analysis tool to support urban planning, the company launched the “City Analytics Mobility Map”, which provides institutions with useful data for assessing the impact of mobility measures adopted during the lockdown. At the end of September, the Enel X Circular City Index was launched, another free indicator that measures the level of urban circularity in the areas of digitalization, environment and energy, mobility and waste.
Enel X is the Enel group's global business line that offers services to accelerate innovation and drive the energy transition. World leader in the sector of advanced energy solutions, Enel X manages services such as demand response for 7.7 GW of total capacity globally and 195 MW of storage capacity installed worldwide, as well as around 245 charging points for electric vehicles made available worldwide1. Through its advanced solutions, including energy management, financial services and electric mobility, Enel X provides each partner with an intuitive and personalized ecosystem of technological platforms and consulting services, focused on the principles of sustainability and the circular economy in order to provide people, communities, institutions and companies with an alternative model that respects the environment and integrates technological innovation into daily life. Each solution has the power to transform the goals of decarbonization, electrification and digitalization into sustainable actions for all, in order to build together a more sustainable and efficient world.
1 Public and private charging points, including interoperability points.