Building the roads of the future: SITE, together with Anas, creates the first Smart Road in Italy

Client:

Anas is an Italian company that has been building all the roads that connect our country since 1928, dealing with their design, management and maintenance, proposing effective solutions to solve the connection problems of a geologically complex territory that is Italy. Over the course of its long history, Anas has upgraded approximately 6,500 km of regional and provincial roads and built 2,034 tunnels. Today, the entire Anas road network comprises approximately 32,000 km of state roads and motorways. The company’s main objectives include strengthening existing road assets, improving the road system and enhancing connections, without ever neglecting the safety and efficiency of the network and infrastructure.

Aim:

The project is geared towards improving road safety and making traffic flows more efficient, equipping the country with a smart road network that is open to the new challenges of the future, such as electric power, assisted driving and self-driving vehicles. In addition, the Smart Road will allow all road users to connect and talk to each other to exchange real-time data and information on traffic, accidents and weather, along with the provision of other services that will increasingly improve safety levels for travellers. This, however, is only a starting point for a project that Anas intends to progressively extend throughout the country, transforming about 3,000 km of Italy’s major roads and motorways into smart roads.

Solution:

The SMARTROAD ANAS SS51 Alemagna “Belluno-Cortina is based on a complex digital platform that is used on the road network as a ‘nervous system’ with the support of IoT (Internet of Things), AI (Artificial Intelligence), Big Data and advanced sensor technologies through the development of the national ultra-broadband network. The ANAS project required the contribution of SITE for the construction of the telecommunications network infrastructures in fibre optics, wireless, networking and energy distribution networks. The smart road has also been equipped with multifunctional, intelligent poles – engineered by SITE – which play a role of primary importance: to allow the exchange of information between the infrastructure and road users. These intelligent poles are, to all intents and purposes, smart poles, designed to be veritable multifunctional posts equipped with innovative communication systems. The DSRC and C-V2X technologies have been installed in a single RSU, making it possible to exploit the full potential of a system that covers not only vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) but also vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications.

• The DSRC system (Dedicated Short-Range Communications defined by the IEEE 802.11p standard) is responsible for communication in the 5.9 GHz band which completes the standard and the telecommunications range.
• The Wi-Fi in MOTION system has the task of integrating mobile phone connectivity for navigation via a special ANAS services APP.

Completing the innovative communication system is the video surveillance (Smart Camera), designed by SITE, to ensure visual and immediate control over the entire road section. The Smart Road is also equipped with innovative algorithms capable of immediately alerting the ANAS operations centre should the need arise, for example due to particular weather conditions or to accidents.