Ricerc@Sapienza

The city of Dubai (UAE), in accordance with its program of transformation into one of the most smart and sustainable cities, hosted the 2018 edition of Solar Decathlon, the first in the Middle East (SDME 2018). The harsh climate of UAE, along with the booming construction industry and energy consumptions and CO2 emissions among the world's highest, tasked participating university teams to find innovative solutions able to drive the region building sector towards a more sustainable future.

Nowadays, thanks to the hardware costs reduction everyone at home owns at least one hi-technology devices to support life quality. This paper proposes a new methodology to analyse the indoor air quality with a cheap and third-age-dedicated device. A new prototype, called Home Pollution Embedded System (HOPES), was developed to give simple and understandable information, also comprehensible for people with cognitive problems or that are not familiar with new technologies.

La diffusione dell’ideale tecnologico all’interno delle società ha fatto sì che si iniziasse a parlare già dagli anni Settanta del Novecento di smart home. Con l’avvento della terza rivoluzione industriale la concezione della casa è andata via via sbiadendo il suo ruolo di centro della comunicazione familiare, per acquistarne uno più ampio di comunicazione con il mondo circostante. Quali sono le caratteristiche che definiscono una smart home? Che tipo di soggetto sarà in grado di abitarla?

Smart home e giovani: quale la percezione? La presente indagine pilota, effettuata da un gruppo di studiosi dell’Università Sapienza di Roma mira ad analizzarne i risultati, rappresentando una ricognizione essenziale di quello che è l’universo dei giovani in relazione al mondo smart e alla domotica. L’Ateneo Sapienza sposa appieno la sfida lanciata da Horizon 2020 con il progetto ReStart4Smart, un laboratorio pratico in cui poter conoscere e sperimentare, fare ricerca e innovare, condividere e divulgare, tanto problemi quanto, e più possibile, soluzioni ambientali ed abitative.

In these times of “worrying increase of urban population, scarcity of energy resources, high social conflict, ethical drift and disciplinary loss” (Fistola 2011: 74) the theme of the smart home with its corollaries polarizes the interest in multiple disciplinary and research fields. What does the house represent? Why did we feel the need to turn it into a con- glomeration of technology? What are the effects on people and society?

Increasingly, we hear of ‘smart’ cities, communities, governance and people as constituting the basis of initiatives by which we might address various social and environmental problems, particularly those connected with sustainability, usually by means of an ‘intelligent’ connection with the ‘network society’. This book addresses the issues raised by the emergence of ‘smart’ dimensions and initiatives in society, critically engaging with questions surrounding the feasibility of what smart initiatives propose and the extent to which they can really offer solutions to the challenges we face.