TURIN — As a summer of record heat pushes red alerts across northern Italy, including Turin, a satellite navigation app built to route walkers and cyclists away from the hottest streets has won a national mobility award.
Urban Green Navigator, developed by the Naples startup Latitudo 40, took a prize at the IoMobility Awards 2026 in early July after a pilot in Turin, the Piedmont capital. The app reads satellite data on temperature and greenery, then suggests the coolest, shadiest route rather than only the shortest one.
Cooler routes
The tool works like an ordinary walking and cycling navigator, but its logic is different. It draws on Latitudo 40’s EarthDataInsights platform, which turns satellite imagery into maps of land surface temperature and tree cover, then favours streets with shade and lower heat.
“Once you set a destination, the algorithm does not just give distance and directions,” said Gaetano Volpe, chief executive of Latitudo 40. “It brings in data on temperature, greenery, and air quality to suggest the best route for the user and the environment.”
The timing is pointed. Italy’s heatwave, driven by an anticyclone nicknamed Cerberus, has pushed temperatures near 40 degrees and placed more than 20 cities on the Health Ministry’s bollino rosso (red alert), the highest level.
Turin pilot
Turin was chosen as the test city through ToMove, a mobility programme run by the city and financed under Italy’s post pandemic recovery plan. Partners include the innovation hubs OGR Torino and I3P, alongside the bank Intesa Sanpaolo.
During the trial, users mapped more than 2,000 kilometres of routes and avoided emitting more than 300 kilograms of carbon dioxide, according to Volpe. The city receives anonymised data showing where heat and traffic hit hardest, information it can use to plant trees or add shade.
Wider ambitions
A second version targets company mobility managers, who could measure the carbon emissions of staff commutes for their companies’ sustainability reports. Commuting often falls under the hardest carbon emissions for firms to track.
“For citizens, it is a sustainable navigator that returns the fastest and most comfortable route,” Volpe said. For now the app runs in only a handful of cities, with Turin as the proof.
Whether cooler routes will change entrenched daily habits over time will take much longer to show. As the heat returns each summer, the question is no longer only how fast a city moves, but how safely.
