The Municipality of Catania, a major urban hub in Italy comprising the city of Catania and 57 surrounding areas, has embraced advanced technology from Hanwha Vision to enhance its urban monitoring capabilities.
With a population of over one million, Catania is the seventh largest metropolitan area in Italy, facing challenges of preserving its historical and architectural heritage while updating urban services to meet modern demands.
Smart City Initiatives
Recognizing the potential of smart city technologies, Catania's local administration adopted Hanwha Vision cameras and Park Smart software to achieve its modernization goals.
This initiative involves deploying intelligent parking solutions and urban monitoring systems in the city’s historic center, using advanced video analytics to provide city leaders with valuable data and insights. Meanwhile, residents benefit from digital services such as real-time parking availability.
Parking and Urban Management
Around 100 cameras were installed in key locations, chosen for high parking demand
The integration of Hanwha Vision A-Series cameras with Park Smart has created an AI-driven parking monitoring system. This offers real-time updates on available street parking, improving traffic flow and reducing congestion, ultimately enhancing overall road safety.
Around 100 cameras were installed in key locations, chosen for high parking demand. Efforts were made to ensure these cameras fit aesthetically within Catania’s Baroque architecture, with installation approved by the Superintendency for Cultural Heritage.
Efficient Urban Planning
Featuring edge AI technology, the cameras conduct analytics within the device, offering real-time data without costly infrastructure. These systems track parking patterns and occupancy, supporting informed urban planning and allowing the municipality to adjust mobility policies based on actual usage.
The system’s real-time data is accessible via a mobile app and in-vehicle displays, aiding citizens in locating available parking instantly.
Beyond Parking to Public Safety
Catania plans to extend the use of AI-powered video analytics beyond parking management
Catania plans to extend the use of AI-powered video analytics beyond parking management to enhance public safety. The system could detect unsafe driving, such as not wearing helmets, and monitor vehicles operating under restrictions. As part of a broader strategy, the city aims to incorporate traffic flow analysis, extreme weather monitoring, roadside waste detection, and other urban safety initiatives.
The smart city infrastructure, built on Hanwha Vision's open platform, offers the flexibility to expand coverage and integrate more devices seamlessly in the future.
A spokesperson from the Municipality of Catania stated, “This is a true smart city infrastructure in which we can provide significant services to our citizens, starting with intelligent parking and extending to broader urban monitoring and governance capabilities. Hanwha Vision’s solution gives us a secure, reliable, AI-powered video solution that transforms how we manage the city in real-time.”
The Municipality of Catania is one of Italy’s largest and most complex urban areas, encompassing the city of Catania and 57 surrounding sites, with a population exceeding one million residents.
As the seventh-most-populated metropolitan city in Italy, Catania faces the dual challenge of preserving its rich historic and architectural heritage while modernising urban services to meet the evolving needs of its citizens, visitors, and local authorities.
Urban monitoring system
Catania leadership understood that smart city technologies could improve efficiency, sustainability, and quality-of-life while also enabling more data-driven decision making. The local administration turned to Hanwha Vision cameras and Park Smart software to make its smart city goals a reality, deploying intelligent parking and an urban monitoring system in the historic city center.
The combined solution provides the city leaders with advanced video analytics and data insights, while citizens receive cutting-edge digital services such as real-time parking availability.
For years, the concept of a smart city had been discussed by the Municipality of Catania's leadership. The need for intelligent parking and urban management within the city center provided the ideal opportunity to test advanced video analytics and smart parking software in a controlled environment before rolling out city-wide. The solution, therefore, needed to deliver immediate value to the administration and citizens while forming the foundation for broader urban intelligence initiatives.
Parking monitoring system
The combination of Hanwha Vision A-Series cameras with Park Smart provides a connected, AI-powered parking monitoring system that enables real-time visibility of available on-street parking while simultaneously supporting urban monitoring and regulatory enforcement. This has reduced congestion and improved traffic flow, boosted the citizen experience, and increased road safety.
Approximately 100 cameras are installed at strategic locations where parking demand is highest. Special consideration was given to aesthetics and heritage preservation: the selected cameras blend discreetly into the city’s Baroque architecture and were approved by the Superintendency for Cultural Heritage for installation directly on historic poles.
Urban planning decisions
The edge AI cameras carry out analytics within the devices themselves, improving time-to-insight and eliminating the need for costly servers. They monitor time-based and pay-per-use parking spaces, detecting availability and transmitting data in real time to a central dashboard. From there, information is shared with a mobile application and in-vehicle displays, allowing citizens to immediately locate the nearest available parking space.
For city administrators, the system provides valuable statistical insights into parking occupancy, turnover, and demand patterns. These data-driven insights support more informed urban planning decisions and enable the municipality to continuously refine mobility policies based on real-world usage.
Beyond parking management
Beyond parking management, the administration expects to use AI-powered video analytics to detect unsafe driving, for example, a motorcyclist not wearing a helmet, and vehicles circulating despite being impounded. This expands the system’s value beyond mobility into public safety and regulatory enforcement.
With the historic city center project providing tangible value to citizens and the local administration, there are plans to scale the smart city solution to include traffic flow analysis, extreme weather monitoring, roadside waste detection, and broader urban safety initiatives.
Providing significant services
Building the smart city infrastructure on Hanwha Vision’s open platform provides the flexibility needed to add more devices and cover additional areas in the future without an extensive re-work of the existing infrastructure.
Spokesperson at the Municipality of Catania said, “This is a true smart city infrastructure in which we can provide significant services to our citizens, starting with intelligent parking and extending to broader urban monitoring and governance capabilities. Hanwha Vision’s solution gives us a secure, reliable, AI-powered video solution that transforms how we manage the city in real time.”
