Cities are where most European energy is consumed and also the origin of most greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Street lighting is a key public service provided by public authorities at the local and municipal level, and it is essential for road and personal safety and urban ambience. As of 2014, there are more than 90 M traditional streetlights in Europe and the overall public lighting accounts for 50% of the electricity consumption and 60% of the energy bill of most European municipalities [2015, Covenant of Mayors Initiative]. New solutions like Solid State Lighting (SSL) appear very promising as they allow to save up to 50% of electricity and significantly reduce maintenance costs.

Moreover, it is recognised the deployment of energy saving SSL and “smart” adaptive lighting technologies will pave the way to sustainable and “smart” cities. However state-of-the-art adaptive lighting systems are relatively costly (e.g. computer vision technologies), and are only able to monitor small areas like gardens and parks (ca. 600m2).
In this context LIFE-DIADEME aims at demonstrating a novel and cost-efficient adaptive street lighting dimming system that will overcome the limitations of the state-of-the-art adaptive street lighting solutions, and greatly reduce (30%) street lighting energy consumption (and as well skylight pollution and CO2 emissions) in compliance with the CEN 13201 standard on Adaptive Lighting, further enhancing the benefits brought by SSL systems. The novel system will integrate state-of-the-art low-cost sensors based on a distributed sensors’ network, which will also allow the extension of detection and monitoring (i.e. noise, traffic and air pollution) to entire cities. The LIFE-DIADEME system will also greatly reduce maintenance by 10% bringing to an effective payback for public administrations to less than 8 years.

The pilot will be installed, carefully tested and validated in the Municipality of Rome, in the “EUR” area (business and residential area). Municipalities, multy utility and Energy networks will also support the project validation and dissemination.

The project outcomes will thus have a tremendous socio-economic and environmental impact at the EU and global levels, and it will be seamlessly integrated with Green Public Procurement strategies and future smart cities scenarios. At the same time the project will contribute to the update of future Climate Mitigation and Adaptation policies on stricter emissions limits.