New Technologies and Statistics: Partners for Environmental Monitoring and City Sensing

Urban space is interconnected, thanks to a vast array of technological devices whose data can be aggregated in a geographic database thereby providing a representation of what is happening around us. City Sensing is an “immersive sensing” and a new opportunity to survey the territory and the environment, by means of low-cost sensors small enough to be wearable. Advantages of such a framework are the widespread and numerous measurements at lower unit cost and also the near real-time friendly communication, together with an interaction with citizens. There are, of course, some limits: low-cost sensors’ measurements are affected by a greater error; the huge amount of data produced can result in a sort of data overload; pressure for real time can lead to hasty elaborations. Statistics can offer some help to reduce the impact of the drawbacks related to measurement quality control and error estimates, and they can also offer possible solutions for significant data synthesis and representation.