The role of geometry in intelligent cities of tomorrow
Michela Spagnuolo
Istituto di Matematica Applicata e Tecnologie Informatiche “E. Magenes” – IMATI
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche – CNR
The concerns for a sustainable future have a strong impact on, and are influenced by, the growth of urban areas and how these will be able to address fundamental issues such as energy production and resource consumption, healthy life and well-being, biodiversity loss in their borders, and economic development. The ability to predict, test and evaluate different urban management strategies is therefore becoming an important asset, enabled by the quickly evolving technologies that shape the concept of Smart City such as IoT, HPC/cloud computing and fast telecommunication channels.
In this context, modeling and simulation are likely to play a key role for the development of so-called “digital twins” of complex urban scenarios that may facilitate understanding the relevance of the re-thinking urban management and planning with advanced digital approaches. Digital twins of the built urban structures are central components nourished by a variety of acquisition techniques, and methods for 3D reconstructions of urban scenes have been studied since decades by now. But what are the models needed to represent geometries occurring in complex urban areas? What kind of geometric models are needed and how should these be conceived to support the transition from smart to intelligent urban models?
The talk will discuss this topic in the light of a few exemplary ongoing projects, presenting the latest research results and trends in the area of geometry processing at IMATI.
