A “holistic” approach to innovation and digital transformation of the territory. It is the vision that animates the activities of House of Emerging Technologies (Cte) of Taranto which aims to create an advanced Urban Health technological platform dedicated to the protection of human, animal and environmental health, in a One Health approach.
Starting from the analysis of the characteristics of urbanization that puts biodiversity at risk, the Cte is developing Calliope, an ad hoc artificial intelligence platform.
The Calliope project
The pillar of the Calliope project, financed by the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy and the Development and Cohesion Fund, is the artificial intelligence platform based on large language models. Leveraging up 5G connectivityon a network of IoT sensors and on HPC, is able to acquire a wide spectrum of data in different environments and urban areas and process a dynamic representation of the same.
The “maps” generated by Calliope are therefore a useful tool for public administrations for the development of local policies from a data driven perspective to protect the health of urban areas and communities.
The One Health approach
One Health is an integrated approach that promotes collaboration across multiple disciplines and sectors to address the challenges inherent in human, animal and environmental health in an interconnected way.
This is an approach born from the awareness that human, animal and environmental health are closely linked and that, therefore, it is important to better understand their interdependence with the aim of preventing potential health crises and laying the foundations for living on a more sustainable planet. OneHealth allows direct comparison between doctors, veterinarians, ecologists, biologists, epidemiologists, environmental scientists and others, who collaborate to address health challenges and better understand the dynamics of diseases, studying their origins and monitoring emerging threats.
The focus on the Blue Economy
Supported by the partnership between the Municipality of Taranto, research institutions and industrial partners, Calliope also turns the spotlight on the Blue Economy with the launch of Boa Sonda, the multi-sensor that monitors the marine ecosystem created with the design contribution of Dolphin Conservation (Jdc) and Tilebytes.
Buoy Sonda is an innovative tool for environmental data acquisition positioned offshore. These data will feed a broader One Health monitoring system, functional to identifying environmental risks and assessing the impact of human activity on biodiversity. The data and information collected will be made available to the scientific community and the territory with an open access web platform.
The buoy is equipped with all the emerging technologies developed in Calliope, such as 5G, the internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence.
The device has already been positioned in Mar Grande and the development of the real-time transmission systems is underway. The multi-sensor, multi-band probe buoy with 5G transmission capacity is capable of managing the control and transmission of data acquired from on-board sensors via integrated artificial intelligence systems, interfacing directly with the Calliope il Cohre operations center (Center for One Health Research and Elaboration) already active at Palazzo di Città for a few months. “Edge to cloud” technology was designed by Tilebytes for storing and processing specific content, controls and associated services.
As part of the project, the buoy will have to communicate with additional biodiversity monitoring systems and contextualise the data acquired with respect to the environmental data of the urban and port area, received from aerial drones and other devices, in the broader objective of feeding the platform of Urban Health Intelligence, which will soon be made operational at the ex-Bac complex.
To learn more about the projects of the Cte of Taranto, read the FPA report. and watch the video with interviews and insights.
