Reggio Emilia and IBM Co-operate on Italy’s Second Smarter City

REGGIO EMILIA, Italy .- The city of Reggio Emilia has entered into a strategic initiative with IBM with the aim of creating a Smart City. Reggio Emilia is the second Italian city to create an Innovation Board with IBM to identify and design a new model for a sustainable city through a range of digital solutions, and one of six in the country to agree on a common protocol on IT innovation. Earlier this month, IBM and the city of Parma announced a similar initiative.

Reggio Emilia has approximately 165,500 citizens, and is well known for its art and leadership in education. The city’s management is planning citizen-focused innovations that will provide new “intelligence” for existing infrastructure to optimise resources and improve services to citizens and businesses, making the city smarter and more efficient.

Initial projects within the strategic initiative in Reggio Emilia are expected to include a pilot called “Classroom 2.0” in several schools around the city. Students, teachers, parents and local companies will have a collaboration platform to interact and exchange information about classroom management activities, students’ interests and results, workgroup activities at specific schools, and job openings.

Reggio Emilia’s strategy matches IBM’s vision of a Smarter Planet, infusing intelligence into the world’s systems, processes and infrastructure and providing a better quality of life for people living and working in a Smarter City. This means a systemic and open approach, with new intelligence through innovative IBM solutions designed with and for Reggio Emilia.