Page 32 - Building digital public infrastructure for cities and communities

4.1 Secured, resilient infrastructure and climate adaptation

Building secured and climate-resilient cities relies on DPI, which enables data-driven, integrated
solutions for urban resilience and climate adaption strategies. For instance, in Aveiro, a dense
network of fibre infrastructure, reconfigurable radio units, 5G-New Radio (NR) radio and 5G network
services, Wi-Fi, LoRaWAN, vehicular and passive radars, edge computing units, aggregating
and interconnecting sensors embedded in smart lampposts and municipal vehicles; monitors
environmental and traffic conditions securely in real time (Rito et al., 2023). These infrastructure
components record mobility and environmental data, making a complete live map of these
parameters in the city, and providing the required data for traffic monitoring and safe driving systems.
The system uses open-source data platform as one DPI component (e.g., Helix, a microservice
platform based on FIWARE) that is integrated seamlessly with sensory nodes to achieve resilient
and climate adaptation objectives. Furthermore, the project enables third-party access to the
infrastructure, allowing for extending functionality, innovation and higher users’ engagement (i.e.
the engagement element of the DPI definition – see DPI definition above). This is an example of
how DPI for cities can support adaptive urban management to improve mobility, safety and city
resources allocation.

Another example is Copenhagen’s Cloudburst Management System that combines hydrological
models with real-time sensor data from streets and drainage networks to predict flooding, guide
green infrastructure investments and issue early warnings in case of flooding events (Brears, 2023;
Ziersen et al., 2017). This case shows how DPI for cities (e.g., Cloudburst Management System)
uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) based modelling for water catchment modelling and
flood scenario planning (one form of an AI-enabled, scenario-based planning) as a foundation for
planning and prediction, whereby data are exchanged and stored using GIS-based technologies.
Hydrological models are considered a foundational model that is re-used across several water
catchment modelling applications (e.g., streams classification, catchment area capacity calculation,
flow directions estimation) enables cities to become agile and climate-adaptive, pre-empting risks
and optimizing deployed infrastructure through continuous data feedback.

Egypt’s Command and Control Centre (CCC) in Egypt’s New Administrative Capital fuses a wide
range of IoT sensors, systems and processes to ensure safety and security and to provide emergency
response. It plays a significant role in detecting accidents and unusual activities, by integrating city-
wide video broadcasting with advanced analytics, AI and scenario planning capabilities. This allows
improved incident response and enables unified dispatching for relevant agencies in real-time, in
cases of crises or emergencies (Egypt New Administrative Capital, n.d.).

4.2 Urban environmental sustainability and biodiversity

DPI for cities could drive urban environmental sustainability and biodiversity by integrating data
systems, smart technologies and nature-based solutions to enable evidence-based decision-
making and ecological resilience. An example to demonstrate the use of digital identity to provide
significant value in sustainability and biodiversity use cases like biodiversity monitoring, enabling

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