YoUrban – manage the changing face of the city

The face of the urban environment is changing as pressure grows from climate change and the efforts to limit it. The stresses placed upon cities by factors including rising urbanization rates, technological progress and citizens’ growing expectations, prompted the United Nations to ask cities to commit to its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

That has spurred a search for ways of integrating efficient uses of the urban landscape with the efficient use of energy. In turn, that pursuit has increased the need for data on exactly what is happening in the city environment, a requirement that Enel X is seeking to meet.

YoUrban is the name Enel X has given to the digital ecosystem it has developed for cities and the administrations that run them.

 

Based on technologies that exploit the possibilities inherent in the Internet of Things and Big Data platforms, YoUrban offers an open, modular and high-tech environment that can be customized to meet the needs of individual municipalities.

Through YoUrban, cities can integrate sensors and assets they already have, or which they install, to transform them into smart objects, applying data analytics and big data logic to realize their full potential.

This is a technologically advanced platform that follows the latest standards and exploits digitalization to offer improved public services by integrating the portfolio of services Enel X offers smart cities.

As an example, let’s look at public lighting. This is a core service that cities the world over offer their citizens and is an element that has set the modern urban space apart from cities through most of history. Even so, much of the modern infrastructure relies on outdated technology, with low-quality lighting, frequent faults that are hard to detect and repair, alongside pollution and expensive power bills.

YoUrban allows administrators to manage public lighting digitally end to end, from the active management of lamps and lighting points, if the right technology is installed, to the digital management of faults. YoUrban Faults Management offers a complete picture of breakdowns, integrated through all channels, meaning administrators can monitor the overall state of repair of a city’s lighting, the progress of fault resolution and whether key performance indicators are being met.

Added to this, we offer the free YoUrban app. Citizens can download this to a smartphone and use it to flag faulty lights, as well as to monitor the progress of repairs. The information can be shared in real time with other users. Given that the app is both flexible and modular, it can be further developed to meet administrators’ other needs.

This illustrates the wider series of solutions we offer to enhance residents’ experience of the urban environment – innovative and sustainable steps towards the smart city of the future.