REG4IA
“Smart Presence” Subproject
Start date 1 April 2026 End date 31 December 2026
Operating under the #REG4IA-TER initiative (Tuscany’s Regional AI Hub for Territory Resilience and Security, backed by Italy’s Department for Digital Transformation of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers), the “Smart Presence” project is improving how emergencies are managed in complex environments. With a current focus on the Cisanello Hospital area, the project uses multimodal and generative AI to monitor crowd dynamics in and around critical infrastructures. The practical objective is to equip decision-makers with predictive tools that can adjust emergency response plans in real time and maintain public safety during a crisis.
ISTI-CNR is contributing to the project’s underlying AI infrastructure, driven by the work of two specialized research groups.
The SI Lab is developing privacy-first computer vision systems for comprehensive indoor and outdoor monitoring. By processing data directly at the source (in an “AI on the edge” pervasive approach), these algorithms can identify behavioral anomalies, such as unusual crowding or blocked escape routes. To remain fully compliant with the GDPR and the European AI Act, the system never transmits raw video footage. Instead, it shares only anonymized, mathematical data patterns (deep features), ensuring personal privacy is protected by design.
Complementing this real-time monitoring, the KDD Lab handles advanced mobility analysis using spatio-temporal foundation models. To prepare for unpredictable events like sudden flooding, the lab generates synthetic urban mobility data. These generative models allow city planners and security teams to safely simulate complex scenarios, stress-test hospital evacuation routes, and optimize city-wide traffic reorganization long before a real emergency occurs.