REFLOW. Co-Creating Circular and Regenerative Resource Flows in Cities

Keywords: Urban Flows, Circular Economy, Regenerative Cities

Research unit: Stefano Maffei, Massimo Bianchini, Veronica De Salvo, Leonardo Saletta, Mirko Gelsomini, Martina Carraro, Luca Grosso, Francesco leoni
Politecnico di Milano, Department of Design, Polifactory

E-mail (referent): stefano.maffei@polimi.it

The video shows the demo of the Food Market 4.0 Dashboard project implemented by Polifactory – Politecnico di Milano within REFLOW Project

The video shows Food Market 4.0 Dashboard tested at the Municipal Market Morsenchio (MI)

The Video shows the open-source version of the Smart Scale and Gate (Open Scale and Open Gate) designed and prototyped by Polifactory within the project Food Market 4.0 Dashboard

REFLOW aims to develop circular and regenerative cities through enabling active citizen involvement and systemic change to re-think the current approach to material flows in cities. The project calculates, analyzes, and redefines urban resource usage through specific social, environmental, and economic indicators to assess the relationship between urban production and consumption. The Politecnico Unit developed together with Municipality of Milano and the Morsenchio Municipal Market a pilot project named “Food Market 4.0 Dashboard” (a systemic hardware/software tracking system for fruit and vegetables distribution chains, see https://reflowproject.eu/blog/food-market-4-0-dashboard/ )

Food Market 4.0 Dashboard (FM4.0D), implemented by the makerspace Polifactory (Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano) as part of Reflow’s Milan pilot outputs, aims at employing digital circular solutions to tackle the main challenges that Urban Circular Economies unravel for the Milanese agri-food supply chain. One of the main objectives was to co-ideate, co-design, and co-create a tool that implements and fosters circular economy principles through digital innovation. Food Market 4.0 Dashboard is an integrated system of both hardware and software solutions: a set of reusable crates, a Smart Scale system, and a Smart Gate system. The full system works to track and monitor the flow of fruit and vegetables within the covered municipal markets of Milan. The prototype of the FM4.0D has been implemented in three different steps. The first step concerns the configuration of existing hardware tools (crates, Smart Scale and Smart Gate) to demonstrate how the system works. The second step concerns the design and prototyping of a digital dashboard that connects all the hardware tools. The final step concerns the design and prototyping of the open-source versions for the Smart Scale (Open Scale) and Smart Gate (Open Gate) systems, stimulating the openness of the solution.

Funding:
European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.
Topic(s):
CE-SC5-03-2018 – Demonstrating systemic urban development for circular and regenerative cities
Call for proposal: H2020-SC5-2018-2019-2020
Sub call: H2020-SC5-2018-2
Funding Scheme: IA – Innovation action

Implementation:
(Project Duration) Year: June 2019 – May 2022
(Pilot Duration) Year: November 2019 – March 2022