REDLANDS, CALIF.-- July 07, 2022 -- Last year, the Italian rail agency Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI) built an application using geographic information system (GIS) technology from Esri, the global leader in location intelligence. Called StationLAND, the application is designed to make railway stations the centerpieces of their communities by increasing connectivity to the stations themselves within towns and cities. StationLAND improves the understanding of how and why rail stations work and how they can work better.

StationLAND was designed to address a very specific need. “In Italy, the railways are one of the things that work best. What lagged was our stations,” said Luigi Contestabile, RFI head of facilities, who also led the team that built the application. As a result, RFI sought to use technology to understand how rail stations could be better connected to their communities, thereby encouraging more rail travel. “The stations' centricity in our planning is fundamental to developing the sustainable intermodality we need,” continued Contestabile.

Esri will present an award, Outstanding Innovations in Infrastructure and Public Mobility, to RFI at the Esri User Conference. The award recognizes the agency's use of innovative technology to address modern mobility issues and its pathbreaking work to make rail travel the backbone of mobility options in Italy.

“We are excited that RFI chose Esri to create StationLAND, as it is the most comprehensive use of our technology used for smart transportation to date,” said Terry Bills, Esri global transportation industry director. “It is ultimately a smart city application scaled to the national level, which is an unprecedented use of GIS in this industry.”