Intelligent Domestic Ecosystems: Innovative Housing Models for Fragile Elderly

Fragile users represent a category in which the elderly population is included (fragile elderly). In 2017, there were 962 million people over 60—half the number expected by 2050—many of them with disabilities. During the recent health emergency, frailty was discriminating for access to therapies creating the risk, not yet evaluated, that the mortality rate of fragile users could be increased. This is because, even when not infected, fragile elderly people were denied access to the hospital spaces they needed. The contribution would describe the state of the art and the first results of the research conducted at the Roma Tre University which aims to study innovative housing models for fragile elderly people, capable of promoting de-hospitalization avoiding the aforementioned risk and improving the quality of life through the technological transfer of the Internet of Things from the ICT sector to the architecture one. First of all, the article defines both the final user of the research—the fragile elderly—through its historical genesis, and the tools of the research—the intelligent domestic ecosystems—as new integrated and interconnected housing models. Secondly, it describes the research core aimed to design a prototype, realized with the use of open source and low-cost technologies.