Paolo Nesi: Wi-Fi Vs. Cameras for People Counting

In the recent episode of “Coffee Talk”, Paulo Nesi from Snap4City shared his insights on using Cameras and Wi-Fi for people counting in the City of Florence, Italy. The Distributed Systems and Internet Technologies Lab (DISIT) at the University of Florence, directed by Prof. Paolo Nesi, actively works in the domain of Smart Cities and communities. DISIT has been instrumental in developing solutions in areas such as data mining, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, semantic computing, and more. They focus particularly on big data analysis for monitoring people flows, using data from mobiles, sensors, and cell phones.

One of their notable contributions is the Snap4City infrastructure, which involves managing data for various Italian cities including Florence, as well as other European regions. This infrastructure is used for Smart City Control Rooms, which assist in managing urban aspects like mobility, transport, energy, and safety. Snap4City is also involved in several significant projects such as Herit-Data, which aims to manage tourism flow impacts on heritage sites through big data technologies, and REPLICATE, a European Commission project for developing Smart City Control Rooms in the Florence metro area. Another project, RESOLUTE, focuses on urban transport system resilience, leveraging big data for predictions and analysis of people flow​