PlanIT Valley – the benchmark for future cities and sustainable urban communities
Living PlanIT's model for a city of the future is being developed with the legislated endorsement of Municipality of Paredes in northern Portugal and the national government. Called PlanIT Valley, it has been designated a Project of National Interest (PIN) by the Portuguese Government. It will be built in a series of phases and will accommodate a population of 225,000 when completed in 2015.
The finished city will serve simultaneously as a living laboratory for partner companies, test bed for their smart technologies, innovation centre, incubator for technology start-ups, and demonstration of how Living-PlanIT will collaborate with its partners and property developers to replicate its approach in other locations. In PlanIT Valley, Living PlanIT is making a major step-change by establishing a collaborative community to research develop and demonstrate integrated urban technical, economic and social infrastructure. It seeks to integrate companies, education and government into the urban environment itself which is a major difference from the technology parks and Silicon Valley campuses.
PlanIT Valley will combine intelligent buildings with connected vehicles, while providing its citizens with a higher level of information about their built environment that has been possible previously. Its efficiency will extend into the optimum control of peak electricity demand, adapted traffic management for enhanced mobility, assisted parking and providing emergency services with the capacity to have priority when needed in the flow of traffic.
PlanIT Valley will enable the enhanced monitoring of the vital signs of urban life, the condition and performance of vehicles and infrastructure. As a result, managers will be able to optimize normal daily operations of the city and provide greater certainty in reacting to extraordinary events through real-time modeling and simulation. With a view to incorporating new developments, urban management control systems will be updated with the latest information and technology as these emerge.
Urban mobility will be based on lightweight and fuel efficient electric or hybrid vehicles built with the use of new composite materials. When connected to the city and services, this will make better use of mobile computing capacities in vehicles, benefitting from rich wireless capabilities optimizing the use of bandwidth. These will enable citizens to fully exploit energy storage capabilities while driving, use electricity more efficiently in homes and sell excess capacity to the electric power grid.
In addition, the PlanIT Valley will provide PlaceApps which are developed and deployed to any "device" that will enhance the experience of the user, based on their location and context. From a consumer perspective, PlaceApps can be thought of as the urban equivalent of applications in the iPhone AppStore. They can simply be purchased or subscribed to and leveraged almost immediately by the resident, visitor, or worker.
