The city of L'Aquila is one of the five Italian cities selected by the Italian government to host the 5G experimentation. This city has the specificity of being a "living lab", because it is currently passing through the reconstruction process after the earthquake of 2009, thus offering a "green field" scenario to the scientific community. This process is led according to the innovative paradigm of "Smart City", whose foundation is the INCIPICT project (INnovating CIty Planning through Information and Communications Technology), described in this paper. Its main focus is the development of an innovative optical network, which surrounds the city center and connects the main public sites of interest. The optical network represents an open testbed for researchers in optical transmission and networking as well as the basis for innovative wireless technologies and smart city applications. This paper describes the INCIPICT project highlighting its role in the ongoing 5G trial hosted in the city of L'Aquila. The 5G experimental activities will be driven by several use-cases according to a vertical pilots approach. In this paper a description of the 5G use cases under the coordination of the University of L'Aquila together with the related experimental activities is provided.

The 5th generation of mobile networks has come to the market bringing the promise of disruptive performances as low latency, availability and reliability, imposing the development of the so-called “killer applications”. This contribution presents a 5G use case in the context of Structural Health Monitoring which guarantees an unprecedented level of reliability when exploited for public safety purposes as Earthquake Early Warning. The interest on this topic is at first justified through a deep market analysis, and subsequently declined in terms of public safety benefits. A specific sensor board, guaranteeing real-time processing and 5G connectivity, is presented as the foundation on which the architecture of the network is designed and developed. Advantages of 5G-enabled urban safety are then discussed and proven in the experimentation results, showing that the proposed architecture guarantees lower latency delays and overcome the impairments of cloud solutions especially in terms of delays variability.

This work presents a service for the improvement of cultural heritage experiences, which exploits the advantages coming from the 5G paradigm. Indeed, in a scenario where many users need to be served by a real-time solution which is in turn required to work on different devices, the potentialities of 5G technology show their suitability. In particular, moving the computation to the edge of the network ensures the availability of resources needed for binaural spatial audio rendering in an independent fashion with reference to the client device and at the same time it guarantees real-time availability of this data since the core network, with its impairments, is not involved. This work demonstrates how 5G could be a critical enabler for delivering low latency services at guaranteed levels, data-centric services, differentiated customer experiences, improved security and reduced costs to the users.

Digital Twins (DT) models are gaining special attention in the management and maintenance of facilities. The quality of data contained in these models may be enhanced by the use of processed information coming from long-term Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). In this case real time processing and updating in systems using sensor networks for SHM need low latency and reliable communication. This paper presents a solution for exploiting DT models for SHM and early warning solutions improvement. The case study scenario resides within the 5G experimentation in the city of L’Aquila and it exploits a highly adaptable sensor board and a 5G Multi-Access Edge Computing architecture.

Recently, there has been increased interest in adopting novel sensing technologies for continuously monitoring structural systems. In this respect, micro-electrical mechanical system (MEMS) sensors are widely used in several applications, including structural health monitoring (SHM), in which accelerometric samples are acquired to perform modal analysis. Thanks to their significantly lower cost, ease of installation in the structure, and lower power consumption, they enable extensive, pervasive, and battery-less monitoring systems. This paper presents an innovative high-performance device for SHM applications, based on a low-noise triaxial MEMS accelerometer, providing a guideline and insightful results about the opportunities and capabilities of these devices. Sensor nodes have been designed, developed, and calibrated to meet structural vibration monitoring and modal identification requirements. These components include a protocol for reliable command dissemination through network and data collection, and improvements to software components for data pipelining, jitter control, and high-frequency sampling. Devices were tested in the lab using shaker excitation. Results demonstrate that MEMS-based accelerometers are a feasible solution to replace expensive piezo-based accelerometers. Deploying MEMS is promising to minimize sensor node energy consumption. Time and frequency domain analyses show that MEMS can correctly detect modal frequencies, which are useful parameters for damage detection. The acquired data from the test bed were used to examine the functioning of the network, data transmission, and data quality. The proposed architecture has been successfully deployed in a real case study to monitor the structural health of the Marcus Aurelius Exedra Hall within the Capitoline Museum of Rome. The performance robustness was demonstrated, and the results showed that the wired sensor network provides dense and accurate vibration data for structural continuous monitoring.

Geographical Information System (GIS), as an Information System (IS), helps public/private organizations represent changes in natural/human context and discover patterns/relationships for social and economic progress through the examination of spatial/non-spatial data. In GIS applications, like smart communities services, rapid updating of great amount of data and expenditure of resources (hardware, human, financial) are significant, making traditional analysis on a single computer impractical due to computing limitations. Over the years, GIS has transformed from a tool that merely visualizes data to one that can model future scenarios. So, at first Cloud Computing (CC) emerged as an Internet-based paradigm offering dynamic and scalable solutions. Then, a new ecosystem has been defined Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC), enabling CC capabilities and Information Technology (IT) services environment to the edge of the network, running applications, and performing related processing tasks closer to the customers. In this way network congestion is reduced and applications perform better. Therefore, a transition from CC to MEC is recommended for GIS. In this survey we provide a clear and structured overview of GIS applications proposed to date, who is using GIS and for what, to take advantage of its capabilities from integration with emerging technologies, CC first and MEC later, critically considering the problems, strengths and challenges inherent in these approaches, to support intelligent resource management and to fully grasp the opportunity offered by fifth-generation (5G) connectivity. The survey concludes by presenting some recommendations and future research directions.