You don't need a million residents to be smart. Villages and small towns proving that sensors, data and good ideas scale down beautifully.
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Liederbach's administration operates its own central data platform: LoRaWAN sensors feed it, and a dashboard visualises rainfall, water levels, tree-irrigation and traffic data so staff can spot correlations and act. Part of the Starke Heimat Hessen-funded Smart Village programme, with long-term monitoring live since February 2025.
Lonato, on Lake Garda, replaced 6,843 public light points with remotely managed LEDs under a nine-year Citelum (EDF Group) contract signed in 2016 (retrofit completed February 2018; operator-projected energy savings 68%). The poles double as smart infrastructure — adaptive street and crossing lighting, CCTV, WiFi, air-quality sensors, information panels and parking-occupancy monitoring — with a QR code on each light so residents can report faults from a phone.
Since July 2025 Gründau has published a live "heat map" on its homepage, showing temperature, humidity and air pressure from sensors at seven playgrounds across all districts, carried over the municipality's LoRaWAN network (built since 2022). Separately, the town joined a federally funded two-year intercommunal climate-adaptation strategy in September 2025.
Joint data platform with neighbouring Kronberg: thermal-imaging sensors track traffic flows along the L3005 corridor, with a public real-time dashboard and planned rainfall, flood and soil-moisture monitoring.
Alsfeld's 'Zeitsprung' project (EUR125,000 in Starke Heimat Hessen funding) builds an open LoRaWAN data platform for its medieval half-timbered old town, starting with sensors for parking occupancy, traffic flow, air quality, heat islands and building energy use.
Bad Nauheim's Digital City-Centre Management (EUR936,540 in Starke Heimat Hessen funding) uses LoRaWAN sensors to track footfall, traffic, fill levels in compactor smart bins, and microclimate — feeding an open urban-data platform whose public Bürgercockpit backs evidence-based decisions.