Smart city in Polish. This is how our cities get smarter

Offices in applications, computers controlling traffic, street lighting and indicating free parking spaces, free city internet, integrated transport systems, health monitoring bands and finally the increasingly popular civic budgets - these are examples of the first steps of Polish cities in the transformation to smart cities of the future. What has already been done in this direction, and what solutions will improve the use of Polish cities in the near future?

In 2020, only two Polish cities - Warsaw and Wrocław - were included in the IESE Cities in Motion Index ranking the most intelligent cities in the world. However, other largest Polish cities, as well as much smaller centers, have already entered the road to being a smart city.

In the IESE Citis in Motion Index for 2020, Warsaw ranked 69th and Wrocław 95th. Both cities also took two positions in the ranking "Polish Cities of the Future 2050" prepared by Saint Gobain.

This does not mean, however, that other Polish cities do not implement the idea of ​​a smart city. However, as noted by Dr. Maciej Zathey, director of the Institute of Territorial Development, is just the beginning of the road.

Intelligent transport systems

In both rankings, both Warsaw and Wrocław were recognized for their transport investments. In Wrocław, the most projects related to the smart city project concern getting around the city. One of the key projects was the launch of the Intelligent Transport System (ITS) in 2014, under which 1,285 cameras were installed at 159 Wrocław intersections. Additionally, nearly 650 trams and buses were equipped with on-board computers and detectors cooperating with the software.

In short - it was about smoothing traffic, and in the case of traffic jams, giving priority to public transport. Similar systems have also been installed in Warsaw, Kraków, Poznań, Białystok, Rzeszów and Tychy, and Katowice and Zielona Góra are preparing to order similar software.

Ticket and timetable in the mobile

The ITS system is also coordinated with the Dynamic Passenger Information system. For the majority of people traveling in the largest Polish cities, but also in smaller towns, electronic boards informing about the directions and real times of departure of buses and trams are almost the norm. Moving around the city by public transport, both in Wrocław and, inter alia, in Gdańsk, they also have the opportunity to see where the bus or tram they are waiting for is located. All they need to do is install the appropriate applications on the phone.

In the case of the Gdańsk application "I am from Gdańsk", it is also possible to encode a season ticket on it, thanks to which the plastic card can be left at home, as well as buying a single ride.

Recently, the inhabitants of the Upper Silesian-Zagłębie Metropolis can use a similar application "M2GOinfo". It is over 2.2 million potential recipients of the new service prepared by the Metropolitan Transport Authority in Katowice.

Virtual tickets and e-paper

Since 2018, in Wrocław, in addition to traditional paper tickets available at stationary vending machines at stops, there are also virtual ones available from vending machines installed in trams and buses . The Urbancard system automatically assigns the purchased ticket to the number of the payment card with which the passenger makes the purchase. For the 8.5-year contract under which the system will operate, the city paid the Mint of Poland almost PLN 174 million.

In turn, the first e-paper in Poland appeared at bus stops in Warsaw. It is tested at six stops. What does it look like? Each board at the stop consists of two parts. The first one is the timetable of individual tram lines. The second will inform you in how many minutes the given vehicle will depart. The information is refreshed every ten seconds.

It sounds almost like the description of any dynamic passenger information system. However, as Warsaw officials explain, it is a much more energy-efficient solution. The installed batteries allow the arrays to operate for up to seven days, and additionally they can power them with photovoltaic cells. Additionally, digitally available timetables can be updated with a few clicks. Traditional paper layouts in display cases had to be replaced by hand.

Integrated transport

A smart city is also an integrated transport. However, while in the aforementioned Gdańsk, season tickets can also be used on the trains of Szybka Kolej Miejska, Pomeranian Metropolitan Railway iPolregio, in Wrocław from July it is impossible.

When talking about integrated transport, it is impossible not to mention the city rentals: bicycles, scooters and electric cars , which are also increasingly appearing in smaller towns.

In some of the largest Polish cities, however, bicycles stopped working at the turn of 2019 and 2020. in Kraków, Gdańsk and Łódź. In the capital of the province Małopolska, there are currently only 40 electric bikes under the pilot program. It was the electric two-wheelers that ended the life of city bikes in the Tri-City.

A similar fate befell the first municipal electric car rental in Wrocław in 2020. The project ceased to pay off, although approx. 60 thousand people registered in the system. drivers.

By staying with cars and smoking in city centers, the problem of parking spaces, also in this aspect can reveal the implementation of the vision of a smart city. Apart from such popular issues as applications that enable paying fees for city parking lots, our attention is again focused on Warsaw and Wrocław. In the capital of Lower Silesia, as part of the CityLab program, the ParkDotsu application was implemented, which makes it easier for disabled drivers and coach drivers to find a free parking space.

In Warsaw, technology was employed to control parked cars. Controls in the Unguarded Paid Parking Zone are carried out using cars equipped with special detectors and cameras reading registration numbers and checking in the system whether the owner or user of a given car has paid the parking fee. Currently, the capital's car parks are controlled by seven electric cars.

City and office in a cell

Applications that are peculiar electronic versions of city offices are already standard in many Polish cities. Krakow's "Urząd24", "eUrząd" in Poznań or the "e-queue" in Białystok are some of the many examples of platforms that can be used to submit applications, collect documents or reserve a place in the queue at the office.

The largest Polish cities also create their own applications that are a contact platform between local government and residents. An example of one of them is the "Smart City Poznań" application, used by approx. 10,000 residents. Thus, nearly 2 percent. residents of Poznań, with a few clicks, you can report any breakdowns, the location of a hole in the road or a badly parked car.

The messages about the difficulties in moving around the city go the other way. Through the application, residents can also propose their own initiatives: ideas for cultural events or the location of recreational facilities, and then monitor where the application is located in the clerical machinery.

The "19115" application, "Krakowskie Centrum Kontakt" application, the "Street Bump" application in Łódź, and the smaller cities, among others, operate on similar principles. Gdynia's "Digital Resident Assistant".

On the other hand, to a lesser extent, the Krakow application "Kraków.pl" and the Łódź program "Odkoduj Łódź" function as a mobile guide to the city.

Intelligently monitored city

Systems enabling residents to report problems also help to increase safety on city streets. As long as, like Big Brother, they are supported by a camera system.

According to the authorities of Katowice, the local Intelligent Monitoring and Analysis System consisting of 300 cameras scattered over more than 160 square kilometers of the capital of the voivodeship Śląski caused that in four years the number of car thefts decreased more than fourfold - from 337 in 2016 to 79 in 2020.

In turn, police data show that from 2017 to 2020 the number of crimes is decreasing, and their detection rate is constantly above 65%.

Also intelligently underground

Smart city in the largest Polish cities also began to manifest itself in much more down-to-earth and even underground issues - water pipes. Wrocławskie Przedsiębiorstwo Wodociągów iKanalizacji has implemented the SmartFlow system. As part of it, the capital of Lower Silesia was divided into several dozen measurement zones, in which there were almost a hundred devices monitoring the quantity and pressure of water flowing through the water supply network. The system allows you to instantly locate failures, incl. so-called hidden leaks. A similar system also works in much smaller Piekary Śląskie.

Heating nodes can also be intelligent, thanks to which you could throw away the well-worn notion of "heating season". Nodes that automatically turn on the radiators, also during cold May mornings and September evenings, they operate in many Polish cities - incl. Wrocław, Płock or Częstochowa.

The sensors monitoring temperature, water pressure and other network parameters are also used in Warsaw as part of the Intelligent Heating Network.

Energy-saving technologies

Although all solutions for the development of the vision of smart cities should, at least in intention, save resources, incl. work, a significant part of them also supports the saving of energy and the raw materials needed for its production. An example is intelligent lighting, also functioning in small towns, such as Ustka, where LED lamps are controlled by software. It allows you to change the power with which each city lantern shines. The brightness of the light beam can be modified from 40 to 100 percent. Everything is done by radio. In turn, information on the energy used is sent to the Dispatch Center. Its employees are also informed remotely about the failure of individual lighthouses.

In Wałbrzych, in turn, thanks to the Narrowband-IoT technology, garbage collection takes place not on the basis of a top-down schedule, but only after filling a given group of containers, which allows to limit the journeys of municipal services.

In Krakow, as part of the Energy Management Center, there is, in turn, a system that monitors and analyzes data on utilities consumption in public utility buildings in real time. The information generated by the system is to make the Krakow offices and institutions managed by the city hall more energy-efficient.

Open data

As smart cities not only obtain information from residents, but also share it, Polish cities have started to provide geospatial information on an increasingly larger scale, but not only because traffic, lighting and waste management systems also create countless amounts of data.

Gdańsk has already opened over fifty city datasets for reuse. On the other hand, the "OtwarteDane" portal operates in Krakow. In addition, in the future, a data processing center for the city of Smart City Data Center is to be established in the capital of Małopolska, which will enable the aggregation and processing of city data based on machine learning algorithms.

Municipal spatial information systems also operate, among others in Warsaw, Łódź and Wrocław.

In the capital of Lower Silesia, infrastructure mapping was also carried out using cameras installed in buses. According to the representatives of the Wrocław city hall, as part of the Mobileye8 Connect project, ten city buses equipped with intelligent cameras ran fixed routes for four months. In this way, the cameras made it possible to make an inventory of road infrastructure, including traffic lights, road signs and holes in the road, as well as dynamic mapping of the mobility of pedestrians and cyclists. The action was also to contribute to increasing safety on the analyzed routes, e.g. alerting bus drivers to dangerous incidents in a blind spot.

On the other hand, the Vavel platform operates in Warsaw, which collects and processes real-time data on the location and route of travel of about 2,000 buses, trams and bikes rented at Veturilo stations. The service based on collected data allows you to plan a trip taking into account the current traffic situation in the city.

Healthier Citizens

Smart cities care for their inhabitants begins even before their birth. An example of such an approach are mobile cardiotocography (CTG) devices made available to pregnant women in Wrocław. However, this is a pilot program for the time being, which has been in operation from May to September this year.

As part of it, 66 women from Wrocław who are at least 36 weeks pregnant could rent a mobile recording device for free, among others. the heart rate of the fetus and the movements of the baby. The information from the devices was transferred to the Medical Telemonitoring Center, and their assessment was made within a quarter of an hour.

In the coming years, a telecare program is also to start operating in the capital of Lower Silesia. It will be a continuation of the pilot program existing in 2020. At that time, about 40 seniors from Wrocław were equipped with telemedicine wristbands and special terminals with alarm buttons used in life-threatening situations, stress, anxiety, but also social isolation and loneliness.

Health-related issues certainly also include applications that indicate the level of environmental pollution. In addition to the city software, residents can also use the application of the Chief Inspectorate of Environmental Protection "Air Quality in Poland".

However, the problem of smog in Polish cities, like traffic jams, is so urgent that many other private applications have been created to monitor the air condition and share data.

New icentra districts

According to dr hab. Maciej Zathey, a smart city is not only about new technologies provided to residents in the form of an application, but also, and perhaps above all, a friendly space counted in steps, and not from the perspective of a bird's eye view.

An example of rebuilding the city can be the a project known as the New Center of Łódź, i.e. the reconstruction of a part of the Śródmieście district. It is here that the implementation of modern technologies in the spirit of smart city should be particularly focused.

In addition to the sphere of technology, the intelligence of the New Center of Łódź will also manifest itself in the development of space. An example would be a road six meters underground, so that a woonerf could be created on the surface, i.e. an avenue and a square where pedestrians will be given priority.

Communication around the New Center of Łódź is to be facilitated by the metro, although it will not be a classic underground railway known in Poland only from Warsaw. The first step towards creating the underground railway was the construction of the new Łódź Fabryczna station and, above all, the cross-city tunnel. After the construction of the underground stations Łódź Śródmieście and Łódź Polesie, the cross-city tunnel, in the opinion of the Łódź municipality, will function as an underground station.

Facing the rivers

In many Polish cities, the construction of intelligent and sustainable spaces manifests itself in a less spectacular, but equally expected by residents, way - after many years, turning to face the rivers that flow through them.

An example of this type of revitalization is the project Dzielnica Wisła implemented in Warsaw. The city's nineteenth informal district is to be revitalized by beaches, green areas, restaurants, sports and sailing clubs operating along the river.

In Poznań, the key project in restoring the river is Wartostrada, i.e. the construction of pedestrian and bicycle paths along the Warta River, which has been going on since 2011.

15-minute Krakow

In Krakow, with its face turned to the river long ago, the Climate Kwartał project is being carried out. The project covers a part of the Grzegórzki and Kazimierz districts, whose residents this year could submit their suggestions and ideas on how to adapt the space to create, if not a city, at least a district available in 15 minutes, i.e. for food, without generating additional car traffic.

Earlier, in 2019, the first clean transport zone in Poland was created in Krakow's Kazimierz. However, after protests of active entrepreneurs, the zone was liquidated after two months.

Civic budgets

An important manifestation of a smart city that has been used in Poland for years are civic budgets, under which residents can participate in the creation of smart cities.

Approximately PLN 220 million was allocated to the implementation of tasks selected during this year's voting under civic budgets in the six largest Polish cities, of which the most - PLN 93 million in Warsaw.

Still, the turnout in Internet voting, and therefore less time-consuming voting, is not impressive. During this year's voting for the civic budget in Wrocław, nearly 86,000 were donated. However, the number of voters was much smaller, as it was possible to vote for both municipal and residential projects. The last selected task gathered only a little over 2,000. votes, i.e. much less than 0.5% of those entitled to vote voted for them.

On the other hand, the results should encourage voting all the more, because even a few votes can tip the scales of a few hundred thousand and sometimes several million zlotys.