SMART-CITY:THE-ROLE-OF-TECHNOLOGY-AND-PEOPLE
Dr. D. Vijaya Geeta
Associate Professor
Department of Operations
GITAM Institute of Management
GITAM University
“A city equipped with basic infrastructure to
give a decent quality of life, a clean and sustainable environment through
application of some smart solutions.” – Times of India
“A smart city uses digital technologies or information and
communication technologies (ICT) to enhance quality and performance of urban
services, to reduce costs and resource consumption, and to engage more
effectively and actively with its citizens.” – Wikipedia
“A developed urban area that creates sustainable economic
development and high quality
of life by
excelling in multiple key areas; economy, mobility, environment, people, living, and government. Excelling in these key areas can be done
so through strong human
capital, social
capital, and/or ICT infrastructure.” – Business dictionary
From
all these definitions, one can see that the main elements of the smart city
concept are sustainability provided through institutional and physical
infrastructure and quality of life consisting of social and economic
infrastructure. But what is the need of such smart city? Is it all hype that is
created unnecessarily? Why now? To answer these questions, one must understand
the present situation in the country. At present India has 31 percent of its
population living in cities. This population provides 63% of the country’s
economic activity. It is estimated that by 2030, half of the country’s
population will live in cities (smartcitieschallenge.in). With increasing
population and urbanization, one requires to develop better infrastructure to
serve the needs of the citizens who form the focal point of smart cities
endeavor.
Smart
city is all about providing better services to its citizens across socio –
economic circle. It reflects on provision of better and timely services in
terms of livability, workability and sustainability (Krishnamoorthy, 2015).
Livability emphasizes on empowered citizens, improved reliability and
resilience, hygienic conditions and lower cost of living. Workability
emphasizes on creation of new jobs, investment opportunities and safe
workplace. Sustainability emphasizes on optimum utilization of energy, less
reliance on non-renewable energy and less cost of energy. The promise of such
smart city can be fulfilled by making intelligent use of technology.
Intelligent
solutions like smart lightening that operates based on the fading visibility
will help in conserving the energy in both homes and in the streets. City wide
surveillance through connectivity and video analytics will help in ensuring
public safety. Solutions like smart financing may help in mobile and online
payment (Krishnamoorthy, 2015). Data analysis through smart apps, prompt
delivery of services through e-Governance and maintenance of air and water
quality through monitoring are some of the smart solutions, a city can adopt
(Avinash, 2015).
Across
the globe, one can find different cities that have adopted technology to
provide smart solutions to support the needs of their citizens. Examples of
such cities (Puzhakara, 2015) are given below:
·
Birmingham has digital platform for
defining GP service online so that well being and health of the citizens can be
taken in online.
·
London boasts of using spatial data
analysis and visualization to enable evidence based decision making.
·
The city of Bristol uses smart energy
policy to tackle growing energy needs and reducing carbon emissions.
·
The Glasgow city uses future city
demonstrator programme.
·
Cities like Chicago and Singapore uses
dynamic passenger system, dynamic parking system and automatic bollard system
(Chekuri, 2015)
Closer
to home we have the initiative adopted in Mumbai for city
surveillance in terms of putting up CCTV and Number plate cameras, network
connectivity, establishment of data centers, vehicle tracking system and
collaboration monitoring (Kohale, 2015). In Visakhapatnam, Pheonix IT solutions
started a pilot project in Kirlampudi Layout, Visakhapatnam, named as “Let’s
get Smart – Kirlampudi”. In this project, they have started programmes such as
Green Vizag which takes care of tree plantation, reusable energy and rain
harvesting, Safe Vizag in which sensors are placed in different areas which are
directly connected to the nearest phone booth, Clean Vizag which takes are
educating people on need of keeping the surrounding clean and segregating the
waste in different bins for recycling, Digital Vizag takes care of smart street
lighting, CCTV cameras and Wi-Fi connectivity, and Healthy Vizag programme
creates the awareness among the citizens on the benefits of Yoga, walking and
cycling. A community portal named www.onevizag.org
is also been set up for the benefits of the people residing in that place. All
these examples show that technology plays a big role in providing smart
solutions. The core elements being Networking, Cloud services, Artificial Intelligence,
Geographic Information System (GIS) and Analytics (Gowda, 2015).
Although
technology plays a major role in providing smart solutions and helps in building
smart cities, behavioral change in the people is also necessary to make smart
city a possibility. Each and every city has its own culture nurtured by its
citizens and these citizens need to do their bit in building the smart city.
Technology may help in building hi-fi infrastructure but issues like hygiene,
environment, health and smart living requires manual interventions from the
people themselves. We have different cities in the world where people adopted measures
to build a sustainable smart city. Some of them are presented below (Kohale,
2015):
·
Copenhagen has one of the lowest carbon
footprints and encourages its people to adopt cycling as means of commuting
·
In Freiburg, people set up a car free
neighborhood to conserve energy.
·
In city of Hague, the residents used
their own money to restore inactive windmill and thus helped in forming
alternate energy system.
·
In Hangzhou, residents have adopted
bicycle sharing.
These
are only few examples and there are many such cities where technology and
people worked together to build a smart city.
One
can understand that successful smart cities we find across the globe places
emphasis on economy as well as ecology. This should be taken as a success
mantra as India goes into building its own smart cities. Since building smart
cities in India would be a Brownfield project rather than Greenfield, it
requires full understanding of the city. A single solution may not be suitable
for all the cities since each city and its culture will different from one
another. One must come up with customized plan for each city keeping in view
its residents, their culture and views. Building a smart city in collaboration
with its people will certainly help in coming with a sustainable model that
will serve the present as well as future generations to come. Building a smart
city is not just a job for the Government and few private players. It is the
responsibility of each and every individual citizen to make it happen.
References:
1.
Krishnamoorthy, R. (2015), Visions for
Smart India – Industry Perspective. In Mohan Rao (Chair), Smart Solutions for Smart Cities. Symposium conducted by CII and
APTDC, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
2.
Gowda, Sandhya. (2015), Visions for
Smart India – Industry Perspective. In Mohan Rao (Chair), Smart Solutions for Smart Cities. Symposium conducted by CII and
APTDC, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
3.
Kohale, Jayant. (2015), Smart city
visions from around the world. In Raja Srinivas (Chair), Smart Solutions for Smart Cities. Symposium conducted by CII and
APTDC, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
4.
Puzhakara, Abhilash. (2015), Smart city
visions from around the world. In Raja Srinivas (Chair), Smart Solutions for Smart Cities. Symposium conducted by CII and
APTDC, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
5.
Avinash, K. R. (2015), Smart city
visions from around the world. In Raja Srinivas (Chair), Smart Solutions for Smart Cities. Symposium conducted by CII and
APTDC, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
6.
Chekuri, Srinivas (2015), Smart city
visions from around the world. In Preeti Sinha (Chair), Smart Solutions for Smart Cities. Symposium conducted by CII and
APTDC, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
7.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/What-is-a-smart-city-and-how-it-will-work/listshow/47128930.cms