The second hypothesis,
perhaps more credible, is that Seoul is very well organized in terms of
transportation, with real-time information to move buses, cars and trains with
maximum efficiency. This also explain why Seoul is the best place to host ICSC2019 (International Conference on Smart Cities). The main theme of ICSC 2019
was the sustainable and disaster resilient maintenance and rehabilitation of
smart city facilities, with special sessions dedicated to the smart pavements
and infrastructures.
 |
| Figure 1 - Logo of ICSC2019 |
I took advantage of
the theme (and not just of the place as surely you are thinking!!!) to present
my paper titled “A novel hybrid road system for the energy harvesting”.
During the conference
I also attended a poster session and I had the possibility to share my project
with experts from academia and industry. My poster took the attention of the
Korean company Han Soo, which works on road pavement. I had some interesting
feedback and we planned to start a collaboration. They proposed two solutions:
a polyurethane binder having a very short curing time and a semi-transparent
non-slip tape that could be directly implemented on the top of my prototype.
 |
| Figure 2 - An interesting discussion |
Depsite the conference
filled the whole day, I carved out time to visit the Seoul. Firstly I visited
the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, designed by Zaha Hadid. It is a landscaped park
that serves as a green oasis and a public plaza. The building coexists
perfectly in the urban environment and it hosts event and art exhibitions. A
mandatory stop is also the Gyeongbokgung, the royal palace of the Korean
dynasty. From an engineering point of view, I could appreciate the typical home
heating system called “Ondol”. It is the early version of the underfloor
heating and it consists on heating some stones placed under the floor. When the
fire is lit in the fireplace, the fire and the hot smoke pass through the gorae
under the rooms, raising the temperature of the floor and then passing through
the chimney at the end.
 |
| Figure 3 - Scheme of the typical korean heating system |
Not far from the royal
palace, I had a walk to the Bukchon Hanok Village, a picturesque residential
area with the typical Korean houses. Along the street there were a lots of
cartels with the ban on speaking loud to not disturb the residents. It was a
surreal situation, where hundreds of tourists walked in silence around the
village and the only noise was the click of some camera. This reminded me a touristic
neighborhood of Naples called “quartieri spagnoli”. There the noise is a kind
of background music that goes on for all the day!
Anyway I have to remind myself that
this blog is not my travel diary! If you want know more about the most
important monuments, attractions and traditions of Seoul I suggest you to read
the guide “Seoul” edited by Lonely Planet!
In the next post I will talk about a software for the realization of
animated presentation called videoscribe. Stay tuned!!!
By for now
Domenico
“The research presented in this
report/paper/deliverable was carried out as part of the H2020-MSCA-ETN-2016.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s H2020 Programme for
research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement
number 721493”
No comments:
Post a Comment