Cities facing environmental issues: the Snap4city approach

We are in the era of smart cities, all city decision-makers are increasingly oriented to use technology as a support for urban planning and to provide real time services, that allow an increasingly immediate and direct exchange with citizens. For this reason Big Data platforms for the management of smart cities must be more and more integrated in every aspect of city life and involve and provide services for all the different types of users, starting from urban planners to tourists, commuters, students, citizens, etc. Moreover, it is necessary to prefer Big Data solutions that have already been implemented in other European smart cities. In fact, making use of already consolidated platforms allows the comparison with guidelines and solutions already widely discussed and approved and whose results are evident and can support the replication of similar procedures in a new smart city. In this context is located the Snap4city Big Data Solution, that is applied in numerous Italian and European cities and regions: Florence and Tuscany, Helsinki and Finland, Cagliari and Sardinia, Antwerp and Belgium and many others. This paper is focused on the description of the solutions implemented in Snap4City related to the monitoring of urban environment, in particular for the study and forecast of air quality. As a reference scenario, the results achieved in the cities of Florence and Helsinki are compared.