The City of Athens, Greece has launched “Project Athena” – an initiative that will use technology and innovation to overcome some of the city’s urban challenges.
The city has prioritized two key issues faced by residents and visitors – cleanliness and accessibility. Sensors will be placed throughout the city to collect data on street and air cleanliness, accessibility for pedestrians and people with disabilities, noise pollution, temperature, and humidity. The project has started in a square where city hall is located, with 10 sensors installed inside trash cans to measure their levels of garbage, and on pedestrian crossings to detect accessibility problems. The data collected by the sensors is then processed by a management platform, for municipal authorities to analyse and control waste collection and the accessibility of pedestrian crossings.
The Mayor of Athens, Mr. Costas Bakogiannis, stated “Athens welcomes the 21st century in practice. We try to exhaust the applications of technology, starting with man and his needs. Sensors do nothing more and nothing less than “measure” the quality of life in the city. In other words, they follow the daily habits of the resident and the visitor and give us data, directly and reliably. They are data that not only enable us to intervene quickly and provide solutions but also that allow us to plan with specific elements. So, we can be more efficient and more precise in any change that takes place in the city “.
Project Athena is a joint project involving the city, the Greek digital business agency ATCOM, and Microsoft.
“The city that serves its citizens and offers them a high quality of life is smart first and foremost. I am very happy because, with our cooperation with ATCOM, we offer to the Municipality of Athens those technological tools that will support important aspects of its operation, such as cleanliness or accessibility. The Athena project shows us that collaborations like this one with the Municipality of Athens, give birth to innovation that focuses on the person and their needs,” said Theodosis Michalopoulos, CEO of Microsoft for Greece, Cyprus and Malta.