: Smart City Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik is the southernmost city in Croatia and is the administrative centre of Dubrovnik-Neretva County. The administrative coverage of the City spans over an area of 144.32 km² and counts 42 641 inhabitants. Dubrovnik is one of the most prominent Croatian and the world tourist destinations, with numerous cultural and natural tourist attractions of which the most popular are: Dubrovnik city walls, Stradun, Lokrum, Elafi te Islands and the Rector’s Palace. In 1979, the City of Dubrovnik joined
the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites and its Old City is the monument of the highest category. Today Dubrovnik represents one of the most recognizable attractions of the Mediterranean, which annually attracts a large number of visitors (over a million
in 2015), stationary guests (over 3 million overnights in 2015), as well as cruising guests (almost a million per year). Dubrovnik is defi ned as the historical centre of the luxury tourism of Southeast Europe, which stands out by the quality of the hotel off ers, events related to culture and the profi le of guests who visit it. The area of the City with its natural diversity and rich landscape, as well as exceptional architectural heritage is in its entirety classifi ed as particularly valuable space in the Republic of Croatia.
The Smart City project is currently handled by the City of Dubrovnik Development Agency – DURA, which is a public company, founded and owned by the city. DURA is working on lots of EU projects for the city of Dubrovnik, that’s a great way to get
fi nancing for pilot projects, especially Horizon 2020 which has lots of calls that cover ICT, Smart Cities and similar actions. We are always looking for good and responsible partner cities for other types of projects too. This goes not just for projects but any type of networking or cooperation, this is the best way to share ideas and broaden our horizons, connect startups and do great things!
: Vision and strategic goals
The whole Smart City project in the city of Dubrovnik begun a bit more than a two years ago, so it’s still quite young, however much was done in such short time. It’s a big project consisting of few smaller projects that are addressing diff erent issues in the city so there was lots of planning involved even before basic foundations were set. The fi rst thing was writing of Dubrovnik’s Smart City Strategy – basically a document that contains detected issues in the city, and suggestions how to address them, more specifi cally what solutions are available from ICT perspective. The data input for the strategy is the most important part as it enables correct prioritization of defi ned issues. It required classic statistical approach where diff erent stakeholders were involved in workshops to help in defi ne the problems and solutions from their point of view. After all this work the strategy was adopted by the City Council and now we use it as guidelines for current and future Smart City projects. The next challenge is integration, and that’s something all experts agree. If you implement lots of ICT projects you don’t necessarily get a Smart City, the projects need to work together
providing new emerging properties, joining databases to enable new analytic possibilities on merged data sets. With that power you can than build fully functional Smart City Operations Center which is the crown achievement of such undertaking. Based on this new and complex data the city government is provided with adequate
real-time decision making support. To put this simply the goal is to end up with virtual city advisor that monitors the city 24/7 and suggests how to react on new situations and even predict the ones that might occur.
: Key Smart City projects
Half of the implemented projects that are actually pilot projects of diff erent kinds, but all are connected to the Dubrovnik’s Smart City Strategy. Most of them are in diff erent
phases of testing, some are in closed beta, some open, and few projects are totally complete and in use by citizens and tourists on every day basis.
Smart Parking
124 parking spaces covered with sensors, users will be able to check availability of those spaces using Android, iOS and web apps. Additional integration was done by including barrier parking lot near Pile gates.
Android app: http://bit.ly/SmartParking-Android
iOS app: http://bit.ly/SmartParking-iOS
Smart Sprinklers
Smart Park is the first public park in Dubrovnik which incorporates the latest IoT technology for smart irrigation. The system consists of network of sensors which measure soil moisture content in 50 locations and automatically optimizes sprinklers operation to deliver just enough water to satisfy different requirements of each plant. By doing so, the system provides stable foliage growth and maximizes water savings
at the same time.
Solar Bench
3 solar benches built from integrated solar panels of 200 W output power and batteries that store generated electrical energy for charging smaller electrical devices like smartphones and tablets, so the charging works even during cloudy days. Besides
this main functionality solar benches are equipped with multiple sensors for analysis of meteorological conditions measuring UV index, noise pollution, air pressure, temperature and humidity, generated and energy spent.
Dubrovnik Card
Dubrovnik Card App is actually an augmentation of existing city service for tourists in which they get certain benefits on products and services within Dubrovnik Card, like free entrance to museums, galleries, bus rides, discounts at restaurants and so on. All that and a brochure with detail information now comes in form of a mobile app for Android and iOS. It’s a location based app with 80 iBeacons placed through historic city core, which trigger notification on users’ phone when they pass by the object that is included in Dubrovnik Card.
Android app: http://bit.ly/DubrovnikCard-Android
iOS app: http://bit.ly/DubrovnikCard-iOS
Dubrovnik Eye
Web and mobile applications that enables citizens to report communal issues that they spot in the city. All reports with descriptions, location and photos are forwarded to city administrator which then approves the report and hands them over to right city department. All phases of this process are completely public and online, so the user and other citizens are instantly informed about any changes and results.
http://dubrovacko-oko.hr/
All of these solutions were developed and implemented by local startups – which was one of our goals, to empower citizens to solve city problems, proving that there is no excuse for any city not to evolve to Smart City.
Signifi cant Smart City project
: Dubrovnik Visitors
The newest system from Dubrovnik’s Smart City Lab consists of people counting cameras and a web application. 6 cameras were placed on all entrances to the historic city core to count number of visitors entering and leaving the area. Using this data, we can precisely calculate the total number of visitors in the area at all times. In near future the system will be upgraded to show people density by each street. All data is available in real-time via web application to citizens and tourists so they can plan their visit to the Old City. This tool is really valuable during summer months when it can get a bit crowded. The city government uses the information about visitors’ habits to better organize the traffi c around the contact zone, coordinate arrival and departure times of tourist buses and cruise ships, all in hope to provide the best possible experience of beautiful Old City and its culture. The privacy of citizens and visitors is fully protected
by design as the cameras recordings never goes through the Internet. The video is analysed by each camera internally and after processing only the number of entrances and exits is sent to the server, the video stays locally available temporarily for security
purposes and the Police.
http://dubrovnik-visitors.hr/
We are currently focused on improving and integrating all Smart City projects that were implemented. We also plan to implement city wide Wi-Fi network, as it would really help in to have Internet access as basic infrastructure for all IoT devices that will be installed in future.
