Nowadays, many more people live in cities. Up to 70% of the population are expected to live in cities by 2050. In addition, people who live in cities consume an ever-increasing share of resources compared to the rural population. Ensuring that cities become competitive and able to cope with technological and economic change, on the one hand, and are sustainable on the other and that urban dwellers are happier with life is addressed by the Smart Cities concept.
Smart City can be characterized through six areas or Smart City pillars: Economy, Mobility, Environment, Self-government, Housing and People. Smart mobility, in Smart City, is assessed by several indicators such as: local, national and international accessibility, availability of ICT infrastructure, also the safe, sustainable and innovative transport system of the city. An optimal mobility solution, adapted to meet the population needs, primarily requires having a sufficiently built infrastructure. And, within the given possibilities, it requires building an optimal (multimodal integrated) transport system and then optimally managing the transport. However, traffic management based on the data. Since there is a lack of actual transport or population mobility data, the traffic monitoring and controlling system is complemented by a Virtual City, which simulates a realistic city. Thus, virtual sensors and actuators may be supplemented, by real ones from the University of Žilina Campus (from parking system), while in the future, it is expected to connect to actual data sources from the city of Žilina.
The laboratory has technology for the research and development of optimization algorithms, needful for transport system analysis and road traffic management.
The main goals of Smart City are:
- streamlining decision-making,
- improving coordination and management,
- raising the living standards of the population.
The monitoring and control system allow:
- collection, capture and storage of traffic information,
- processing of traffic information with subsequent activities (prediction of traffic situation, correlation of events, creation of standard operating procedures, definition of Key Performance Indicators, analytics and reporting over the data archive),
- visualization of traffic information (visualization of traffic situation and events in maps and tables, display of video recordings from camera systems).
The Virtual City based on an orthophoto map provides the possibility to:
- deploy various types of virtual sensors in the city, where the output is sensory data usable for the operation of the Monitoring and Control System,
- simulations and parameter changes over time,
- changes in the transport infrastructure during the simulation required by the Monitoring and Control System.
The mentioned technological solution represents a tool for complex research of traffic in the cities. And with an emphasis on research and development of optimization algorithms, needful for analysis of transport system and road traffic management.