A Big Data Platform for Smart and Sustainable Cities: Environmental Monitoring Case Studies in Europe

One of the most challenging aspects of the actual smart city trend is to keep under control the environmental parameters with the aim of general sustainability. The impact of daily activities of humans in the city is presently very evident. The geographical and social characteristics of the cities may react and facilitate the sustainability as well as may really influence how the city may be more or less resilient to certain pollution production. After investigating the theoretical concept of Smart Sustainable City (SSC), this paper reported the work performed in supporting the aforementioned trend and analysis in three European cities (Florence, Helsinki and Cagliari) that despite having different characteristics for population and density, have some similarities, such as geomorphic aspects. In addition, two of them present a relevant port (Helsinki and Cagliari), two of them have similar urban complexity, such as traffic (Florence and Helsinki). The work presented has exploited Snap4City big data for smart city infrastructure and has been developed in the context of Snap4City, Trafair, and GHOST projects. The results have shown that critical aspects have been identified over time for pollution issues, in particular with PM10 and NOX.