ItalyPublic sector2021 – ongoing

Comune di Padova

Gaia voicebot for air quality restriction calls

Padua's voicebot resolved 96% of air quality calls and saved city staff about 20 hours a week

WorkingVendor case studyVendor ↗

Problem

Padua restricts polluting vehicles in the city center from October to April, depending on a three-level air quality alert. The rules were hard to follow on the web portal. The Environment Office could receive up to 3,000 calls in a season, which pulled staff away from their own work.

Approach

The city worked with the technology provider Esosphera to put in Gaia, a voicebot built on Google Cloud, in December 2021. Gaia gives the current alert level, asks about the caller's route, car type and reason for travel, and states the restrictions that apply. It then sends a text message with a link to the city portal. If it cannot answer, a human operator calls the person back.

Results

96%average share of incoming calls the voicebot resolved, per Google CloudVendor case study[1]

about 20 hours a weekstaff time saved on the phone and on staffing the line, as calculated by the city, per Google CloudCompany's own claim[1]

Takeaway

The bot took a narrow, seasonal query with a fixed set of answers, and people handled only the calls it could not resolve.

Sources

Comune di Padova: Keeping local citizens informed in real time with Google Cloud
Google Cloud1 Dec 2022Vendor publication

Source summaries

[1]Google Cloud1 Dec 2022

Google Cloud's customer story describes how the city of Padua used the Gaia voicebot, built with Esosphera on Google Cloud language and speech services, to answer calls about air quality restrictions. It reports that the bot resolved 96% of incoming calls on average and that the city calculated a saving of about 20 hours of staff time per week. The page carries no date; the Internet Archive first saved it on December 1, 2022.

Full details are in the original sources.

Added 4 Nov 2026 · Updated 4 Nov 2026