At the mention of Dubrovnik, the first thing that comes to mind is its impressive, preserved and UNESCO-protected historic core of the city, its centuries-old tradition and the beauty of nature. However, in addition to history, Dubrovnik is also a city of the future - a leader in the field of Smart City solutions in Croatia. By applying green and IT technologies through a series of applications and projects, Dubrovnik has become, and continues to develop as a modern, sustainable and smart city. Another feature of a quality meetings destination that develops in accordance with the latest trends.
Among the largest Smart City projects in Dubrovnik is Smart Parking Dubrovnik - a smart parking system in which around 2,000 sensors connected to the most modern NB-IoT (Narrowband Internet of Things) network are installed in all city parking spaces. Thus, drivers who come to the city via the free Dubrovnik Smart Parking application can more easily find a free parking space, which also reduces traffic congestion around the locations of city parking lots. Through the application, you can also buy bus tickets, as well as vouchers for stops in special traffic regulation zones. The Libertas application offers users a schedule of public transport in Dubrovnik. In addition, Dubrovnik is the first city in Croatia to offer the service of an electric car sharing system, which is an upgrade to public transport and contributes to the relief of the city's traffic infrastructure without noise and harmful gas emissions.
There is also the Dubrovnik Pass project, which, through Ibeacon technology, offers visitors all the information about the most important sights of Dubrovnik and Cavtat in real time, as well as cheaper ticket prices, as well as discounts in numerous restaurants, souvenir shops and travel agencies.
As a very attractive tourist and cruise destination, Dubrovnik has been marked by excessive tourism in recent years, i.e. excessive crowds in the old city centre. Therefore, the city has developed the Dubrovnik Visitor application, which tracks data on the movement of people in the city centre. Thanks to the cameras/counters placed at the entrances to the historic core, this system allows insight into the actual number of visitors, and based on the collected information, updated every 15 minutes, creates a basis for decision-making and action in the organisation of pedestrian traffic.
As part of the "Respect the City" project, an application for predicting the number of visitors on selected dates was developed and launched. In this way, visitors can adjust the time of their tour of the city when it is less crowded. To predict the number of visitors, the algorithm uses various parameters such as the number of visitors from cruise ships, the number of arrivals and overnight stays of guests in accommodation facilities, as well as data from the weather forecast.
A large number of visitors in the city also means a large amount of communal waste. That is why on Dubrovnik's streets and promenades, as well as on the island of Lokrum, passers-by have around a hundred Bigbelly smart containers for collecting plastic and mixed municipal waste. The tank has an independent solar power supply and compacts the waste using a compactor at the collection point, and notifies when it needs to be emptied.
Also, Dubrovnik is one of the first cities in Croatia to launch a project of complete digitisation of the city administration work processes. All these projects and smart solutions rank Dubrovnik among the best Smart Cities in Croatia and enable its further development in the spirit of sustainability, all for the purpose of improving the quality of life of citizens and providing the best destination experience to visitors.