An innovative tool that can measure the level of urban circularity in Italian municipalities and identify areas of strength and where improvement is needed: the „Circular City Index”, developed by Enel X, in collaboration with the Department of Economics and Statistics at the University of Siena, based exclusively on Open Data.
Four key areas are analyzed to determine the level of urban circularity: digitalization, environment and energy, mobility, and waste. Scores are given for each of them, based on comparisons with national and European regulations or guidelines, which assess the extent to which policies and infrastructures that help the municipality to transition towards a circular economy have been implemented.
The „Circular City Index” is a unique tool in Italy and internationally, exclusively accessible to public administrations after registering on YoUrban, Enel X’s portal dedicated to municipalities. Starting from September 30th, the tool will be available free of charge to all Italian municipalities, including small and medium-sized ones. Its flexibility enables it to balance and weight the territorial and demographic diversity of the individual urban perimeters being analyzed.
„The development of the Circular City Index is part of a program launched by Enel X to make sustainability and the circular economy available to everyone by using Open Data, a valuable yet fragmented resource, which can be processed and returned to the community using indicators obtained through ad hoc models developed and validated by the most prestigious research centers. In this way, we are helping cities to become increasingly sustainable by providing analysis tools based on scientific methods,” said Francesco Venturini, CEO of Enel X.
Most sustainability studies focus on large urban areas, but only 23% of the Italian population lives in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, while the rest live in small to medium-sized municipalities.
The Circular City Index is able to respond to the needs of public administrations and make them aware of their level of circular maturity. The index shows that the municipality with the highest Circular City Index is Calderara di Reno, in the province of Bologna, with about 13,400 inhabitants. Some results: the index shows that the municipality with the highest Circular City Index is Calderara di Reno, in the province of Bologna, with approximately 13,400 inhabitants. The overall analysis also shows how municipalities with populations over 100,000 inhabitants on average record higher levels in terms of digitization, but lower values than small municipalities (those with less than 10,000 inhabitants) with regard to waste management.
The Circular City Index is a further step in the path started by Enel X for the development of digital solutions for cities. Last year Enel X, in partnership with HERE Technologies, launched “City Analytics – Map of Mobility”, with which it supported institutions with useful indicators for analyzing lockdown measures and for defining policies for resuming activities. This solution is part of City Analytics, a set of tools created by Enel X for Public Administrations to support urban planning. The service provides a mapping of the macro mobility flows on the Italian territory, based on the analysis of anonymous and aggregated data, coming from connected vehicles, maps and navigation systems, processed in correlation with location data coming from mobile applications and Open Data of the public administration.
Enel X is the Enel Group’s global business line that offers services that accelerate innovation and guide the energy transition. World leader in the sector of advanced energy solutions, Enel X manages services such as demand response for approximately 7.4 GW of total capacity globally and 137 MW of storage capacity installed worldwide, as well as 232,000 charging points for electric vehicles made available worldwide. Through its advanced solutions, including energy management, financial services and electric mobility, Enel X provides each partner with an intuitive and personalized ecosystem of technological platforms and consulting services, focused on the principles of sustainability and the circular economy in order to provide people, communities, institutions and companies with an alternative model that respects the environment and integrates technological innovation into daily life. Each solution has the power to transform the goals of decarbonization, electrification and digitalization into sustainable actions for all, in order to build together a more sustainable and efficient world.
Author: Ioana Andrei
Photo: Enel
