1) What is your department’s role and key objectives in the smart cities?
Our Department is the Energy Management Office of Municipality and Smart City Office. The Office’s role is to coordinate the “Bari Smart City” project towards municipality offices and the stakeholders.

2) What are the key projects your department became involved with recently?
We have been awarded a project of energy efficiency retrofit of school buildings plants, installation of P.V. plants and new information system for maintenance for € 38.178.106

3) If you could give one tip to others active in the smart city industry who want to operate in Italy, what would it be?
The Italian way to smart cities is characterised by integration of themes, a strong focus on welfare and on historical roots of city. Your product should be in line with these characteristics.

4) Can you outline some of the positive aspects of working in Bari, Italy?
The Metropolitan City of Bari is a hub of the Apulian Region. There are policies in new creative living labs companies and significant engagement from people towards sustainable environmental and renewable energy use. Bari has strong climactic and geographical characteristics which give good prospects for renewable energy supplies and therefore green economy companies. This enables attractive investments in the City. There is a significant market for retrofit in buildings towards high energy class, eco-sustainabilty and in renewable distributed energy generation integrated in buildings.

5) What are you looking forward to most about the World Intelligent Cities Summit?
I think it is an important opportunity to update knowledge and to discuss and debate with Cities all over the world.

6) What are the challenges and solutions for evolving the smart cities eco-system?
It’s important for us to fully understand the needs of city users to ensure a high quality of life and implement smart urban development projects. Every solution which encourages citizen involvement and ‘human’ technologies, is followed by an integrated approach for city absorption.

7) Is funding a challenge for smart city developments?
We are funding energy efficiency in public lighting plants, a new model in energy management for distributed generation of energy from renewable supplies, several public private partnership projects in urban renovation and mobility projects (info-mobility systems, park and rides, bike paths, electric mobility etc.)

8) What are Bari Municipality’s priorities for smart cities in 2014?
Citizens and stakeholders engagement in projects , development of smart projects in “micro cities” (airport, port, polytechnic, university, etc.) , improvement of energy efficiency in public lighting plants.

9) What are the key challenges you face in smart city service realisation: Governance, Integration, technology, data management, citizen engagement, other?
The key challenges are governance, that means coordinating the actions of municipal departments, and funding for projects in a period of economic crisis.