Indian Smart Cities and villages projects

[BolliBatlu]

Developing smart cities is a journey

Cities can start with smarter solutions such as the integrated city command and operations centre to centrally monitor the health of key city functions and take coordinated actions. This can help in increasing collaboration between various city departments by integrating city functions such as utilities (water, energy and waste), transportation and public safety, helping to transform city operations from reactive to proactive. Smarter emergency/disaster management solutions help cities to provide comprehensive situational and organizational awareness to effectively manage emergency and crisis situations. These solutions can also be provided during operational decision support for interagency and task force communication, mission readiness, collaboration, coordination and critical information sharing. Smarter public safety solutions can help cities to create a single public safety platform spanning multiple agencies such as police, police control rooms, emergency numbers, fire, traffic, and anti-terrorism agencies, etc. Video analytics can be used to improve effectiveness of surveillance by providing features such as crowd detection, tripwire crossing, abandoned object, facial recognition, illegal turns and parking, vehicle classification and counting.

Smarter sater management solutions can be taken up by water authorities to get real time visibility of water supply in a city to ensure equitable water distribution. This will also help in improving network and asset management, metering, billing, leak detection (using hydraulic modelling), pressure management (using optimal pressure), non-revenue water management and demand management.

Smarter waste management solutions can be taken up for end to end planning, monitoring and efficient operation of waste management. Pan city waste management infrastructure and assets can be mapped (key sites and locations, such as community/RWA collection points, infrastructure, personnel, as well as location of any citizen-reported issues).

Smarter transportation solutions such as integrated fare management (single fare card) for hassle free journey by multiple modes of transportation. Smarter traffic management for improving overall traffic management, traffic prediction, improved traffic signalling based on congestion, traffic enforcement, etc. Smarter parking for hassle free parking experience for street and closed parking areas. Mobile apps for citizens by providing a single window of information on all city services, bill payment, complaint registration and grievances. Developing smarter cities is a journey, not a destination. As cities progress in this journey, they will need to continuously improve and innovate to set new benchmarks to be truly known as a Smarter City.

[BolliBatlu]

Citizen engagement makes a city smart, not infrastructure

The solution that I see is that the government needs to come up with six-eight major apps that make our city truly smart with high citizen engagement. These apps can focus on (a) geospatial and photographic reporting on the cleanliness of roads, parks and public toilets (b) encouraging maximum use of public transport over private commuting (c) ensuring government entitlements reach the people and, if not, they should be able to submit their grievances and get them addressed within hours and not days; (d) engage people to use apps to report incidents of corruption in the government and private sector; (e) inculcate the idea of ownership among citizens for their environment, green cover and public spaces to discourage littering, vandalism and encroachment and encourage protection of historical and cultural spaces; (f) motivate the public to become citizen police (not moral police) and take on the responsibility of making their city safer (like safecity.in does) (g) involve the people of all 450 villages in the Delhi-National Capital Region and engage them to turn these villages into living spaces that are economical and offer all civic amenities.

[BolliBatlu]

How can we enable smart and sustainable cities?

How can we use the Digital India platform to connect the dots between smart cities and the SDGs?

Access to universal public services, using digital platforms and citizen awareness to improve infrastructure planning, management and services, leading to improved quality of urban life. Some headway is being made in a few cities. More buoyant informal and formal labour markets by better digital matching of skills with work opportunities, wages and social protection; leading to more opportunities for decent work and in time, lower poverty. Little progress has been made in this, especially in smaller cities and towns.

Enable sweeping digital reforms around land records and management that cut across rural, peri-urban and urban areas. This should lead to greater access to land, reduced speculation, increased tenure security and, hence, more affordable housing. Pilot action is underway but is fragmented and needs to be scaled up.

Universal coverage of JAM (Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) and moving to digital cash, lowering transaction costs and greater productivity of informal and formal enterprises. This can be accelerated, but is still largely disconnected from smart city initiatives. Bringing together these forms of citizen-centric development; inclusive, responsive and smart institutions and digital infrastructure; strategic e-governance to deliver the SDGs is a win-win for most stakeholders.

[BolliBatlu]

Systems-level thinking for cities

Likewise, decisions about the scale of infrastructure—the extent to which community-scale energy, water and food supply is possible and environmentally friendly—will have to be made understanding each city with its trans-boundary supply chains to understand the trade-offs between going more local and distributed versus drawing on large external networks.

Cities must also think about seasonal climate-related health risk factors such as heatwaves and flooding; as an example, the city of Ahmedabad has created an urban heat plan to deal with heat-related health emergencies in summer.

Eight principles for developing smart cities

—Focus on providing and innovating basic infrastructure for all.

—Pursue dynamic multisector and multiscalar urban health improvements, with attention to inequities.

—Focus on urban form and multisector synergies for resource efficiency.

—Recognize diverse strategies for resource efficiency in different city types.

—Integrate high and vernacular technologies.

—Apply transboundary systems analysis to inform decisions about localized versus larger-scale infrastructure.

—Recognize co-evolution of infrastructures and institutions.

—Create capacity and transparent infrastructure governance across sectors and scales.

[BolliBatlu]

GIFT City attracts global IT-ITeS firms

The companies functioning out of GIFT City include Oracle, US-based integrated solutions firm Maxim Integrated and Befree a leading book-keeping company from Australia. These three firms have already begun operations.

Besides, e-commerce player Infibeam has acquired space in the city and is in advance stages of commencing its corporate office and overall back office operations.

Companies like QX Corporate, Iship Design and Accvell Technologies have established their presence in the SEZ Area of GIFT City for export of various IT enabled services.

Will India’s first Smart City be top-notch?

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SmartCity Kochi to be completed by 2020

The expansion of the SmartCity is being planned to create one lakh job opportunities, Mr. Vijayan said. As per the agreement, 88 lakh sq.ft built-up area has to be constructed. Of this, 67 lakh sq.ft floor space is for IT and 21 lakh sq. ft is for non-IT. The Chief Minister was informed that construction of only 6.5 lakh sq. ft building was over.

The construction of the 55.5 lakh sq.ft built up area will be completed before 2020 and it would be solely for IT, the officials said.

Getting smart with clusters

Q: When SmartCity was inaugurated in February 20, the biggest criticism was that there were no big names, and some unheard companies were given permission to operate.

A: Now, we have couple of Singapore companies and there are big plans to bring in oil research companies at the Digital Energy Cluster, which will be the first of its sort in the country. We are hopeful of bringing some big names such as Baker Hughhes, Haliberton into this. Coming to the question of small firms, what’s wrong in promoting startups. This is in line with Prime Minister’s ‘Make in India’ project. We have given only small space for the youngsters for their startups at concession rates to encourage them in their entrepreneurial journey.

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Pilot phase under Hyderabad Smart City project to be taken up by Cisco

The use cases proposed to be implemented during the pilot phase include smart WiFi, smart parking, parking enforcement to detect no parking, smart lighting, smart transport, smart kiosks, remote expert governance services, citizen services portal and citizen app.

[BolliBatlu]

Make villages smart for Smart Cities success; migration a problem

By developing smart villages, the poor would no longer remain a problem—rather, they would become a part of the solutions to various problems faced by cities. If the influx from rural India is not checked, smart cities would again be flooded with various problems in the course of time and the scarce resources and valuable time spent on making them smart would amount to nothing. Our cities have to be environmentally-sustainable and liveable, in consonance with UN Sustainable Development Goals, to attract foreign investment and drive future economic growth. So, developing smart villages is the crux.

Since the launch of the ‘Community Development Programmes’ on October 2, 1952, governments have been working on several rural development schemes but, alas, development has not been commensurate with the huge spending because of well-known reasons. Rampant corruption in implementation and lack of efficient monitoring, disjointed and fragmented planning by the concerned ministries and departments and the erstwhile Planning Commission are the factors responsible. As a lesson from past experience, I suggest that NITI Aayog or the Union ministry of rural development should work as a single, powerful coordinating authority to sort out various implementation issues arising from time to time. We should also reduce the number of these schemes, to the extent possible, to avoid duplication of efforts and for the ease of correct monitoring of implementation.

The question is to what an extent we can scale (or expand) cities to build the new infrastructure for fresh population mainly due to migration from villages and other smaller cities. Scalability (or expandability) of a city is limited by availability of resources like water, raw materials for economical activities etc. Ultimately it is the question of optimization of spatial population distribution of the country in cities and villages as per resource availability to achieve best economical results for the country. For example, if a city builds (or scales or expands) on water supply from a place 500 km away from it then it has to bear this additional cost of transportation and ultimately may become economically unviable city compared to other cities which spend less money for water and hence become a burden on the nation. In this case it is better to build villages and other smaller cities where resources are available easily.

How India's 'smart villages' are centralising solar power

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Living in smart city may cost more as Centre plans to capture value from infra spend

NEW DELHI: Living in a smart city or near a newly planned national highway or airport? You may have to pay more taxes. Based on directives from the Prime Minister's Office, the Centre is preparing a policy on value capture financing (VCF) aimed at helping the government recover some of the premium that public infrastructure investments generate for private landowners, top officials said.

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89% of investment in first 20 smart cities related to real estate: RICS

NEW DELHI: Real estate is set to become the real beneficiary of the government's flagship '100 Smart City' programme, with the highest chunk, about 89%, of the total proposed capital investment of Rs 48,220 crore in the first 20 smart cities planned to be spent on built environment, transportation, water and wastewater management and energy, according to a white paper by The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).

A meager 7% of investment is allocated for technology infrastructure, while 4% of investment is allocated for public services, the report titled 'Urban Makeover: Evolution or Revolution' said.

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India more than capable of achieving 100 Smart City goal: Singaporean financial firm

“With its ambitious plan, it is more crucial than ever for India to stay realistic and focused. (For) Smart city planning and development, India needs a collaborative approach of shared technology, expertise, learning and governance. That is what India needs to keep focused on to meet their 100 Smart City goal,” said Hany Fam, executive vice president, Enterprise Partnerships, Mastercard.

[BolliBatlu]

Surat Smart City Centre Gets a Heads Up with Delta Video Walls for their Command and Control Centre

A reliable and fully redundant display solution is extremely vital for the effective operation of a Smart City Centre. Delta with expertise in display solutions, installed its 4x4 LED-lit 70” DLP® Video Walls for this strategic centre. With the help of Delta’s Video Wall and Video Wall Controller, data feeds from various sources including transport, city planning, water supply, property tax, disease surveillance, CCTV, health, GIS, traffic signals, illegal constructions, and others, can be monitored by control room operators. The sharp image quality of Delta’s Full HD Video Walls gives operators a high level of attention to detail.

The 20-feet wide screen comprising of 16 Delta 70” DLP® Video Walls will help keep an eye on different development projects of Surat city and monitor the activities of various departments of SMC. This centre is also linked with the Safe City Surat Project of the Surat police department that also has Delta’s Video Walls installed in the control room.

IoT: A crucial component in building Smart Cities

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Centre announces third list of smart cities: 27 cities qualify from 12 states

Union Minister of Urban Development Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday released the third list of smart cities. The new list accommodates 27 cities from 12 states, the minister said. Naidu told reporters that 27 out of the 63 participating cities qualified for this financial year. The cities were put through three rounds of tough competition where they were evaluated on a variety of factors.

“With this announcement, a total investment of Rs.1,44,742 cr has been proposed by 60 cities under smart city plans,” said Naidu.

The smart cities list includes 5 cities from Maharashtra, 4 each from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, 3 from Uttar Pradesh, 2 each from Punjab, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, and one each from Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, Nagaland and Sikkim.

Smart cities list announced by the Centre: Agra, Ajmer, Amritsar, Aurangabad, Gwalior, Hubli-Dharwad, Jalandhar, Kalyan-Dombiwali, Kanpur, Kohima, Kota, Madurai, Mangaluru, Nagpur, Namchi,Nashik,Rourkela,Salem,Shivamogga,Thane, Thanjavur,Tirupati,Tumakuru,Ujjain,Vadodara,Varanasi,Vellore.

[BolliBatlu]

Paradip to be developed as world class smart port city

The rationale behind developing Paradip as a smart city is that it already has a major port and strong mineral resource presence in the region, these factors will make Paradip a hub for Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME).

"The on-going Sagarmala programme and the expansion plan of the outer harbour will only increase the port traffic. The smart city at Paradip will be built on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) basis and it will have Multi-Modal Logistics Parks (MMLPs), Industrial Parks, Residential and Commercial areas, water management system, waste recycling centre, creek development programme for tourism," said a statement from the ministry.

The proposed smart city will spread across 6,727.17 acres, out of which 1,652 acres will dedicated to residential area, where as 1,950 acres and 3,115.17 acres will be dedicated to industrial area and custom bound area respectively.

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Madhya Pradesh to spend 75 thousand crore on developement of cities: CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan

"We are seeking cooperation from United Kingdom on smart city projects in our state in order to give a boost to development activities in the state," said chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan while addressing prospective investors on the first day of his three-day visit to the United Kingdom on Monday. The visit is in response to an invitation by Priti Patel, UK's secretary of state for international development.

The chief minister stated that Madhya Pradesh has several unique projects, apart from smart city projects. The government has mainly focused on basic infrastructure, conservation of water, planned metro rail projects and state and national highway for easy accessibility. He assured that the state would welcome the investors and will ensure that there are no hindrances in implementation of policies.

[BolliBatlu]

Russian Sistema JSFC to take part in India’s “Smart City” project

Russian Sistema JSFC and Indian Tata Group are developing a “Smart City” project for the new capital city of the Andhra Pradesh state, the head of the Russian Industry and Trade Ministry, Denis Manturov, told reporters.

Russian delegation visits SmartCity Kochi to explore investment opportunities in IT parks and start-ups

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With UN’s Roadmap to Urbanisation in Hand, It Is Time for India to Transform Its Urban Policy

However, India’s official participation in Habitat III has been rather low-key and did not generate much media buzz. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation recently launched the India Habitat III National Report, 2016, which acknowledged India’s intention to implement the New Urban Agenda and steer India’s urban transformation towards more sustainability.

However, the devil is in the details. Common problems that impact the functioning of most Indian cities are multiple jurisdictions, weak revenue base and human resource capacity deficit. The flagship Smart Cities programme, rather than strengthening the elected municipal bodies, has further undermined their authorities by outsourcing managerial responsibilities to Special Purpose Vehicles and planning tasks to external consultants.

Mumbainama: HABITAT III harps on inclusiveness; Mumbai needs it badly

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Trai floats paper on delicensing airwaves for M2M communication

M2M technologies, typically, allow wired and wireless devices to talk to each other using sensors, and such applications can be deployed in new age infrastructure projects such as smart cities, smart grids, smart heath and smart transportation. The government had acknowledged the potential of M2M in the National Telecom Policy 2012.

[BolliBatlu]

Ministry of Urban Development to participate in renovating railways stations

NEW DELHI: India’s railway stations will soon smarten up with better passenger amenities, easy access and improved aesthetics. A memorandum of understanding has been signed between urban development ministry and Indian Railways to redevelop 100 railway stations on the lines of smart cities.

A beginning would be made in the 100 smart cities and then extended to over 500 cities under AMRUT and HRIDAY schemes of the urban development ministry. Railway station and the adjoining area in each of these cities will be redeveloped on the lines of Area Based Development. The proposed redevelopment involving railway stations envisages improving passenger amenities, easy access to stations, integrated public transport hub, waiting halls and other amenities for passengers, development of residential and commercial spaces, land scaping.

The urban development ministry will first redevelop 10 model stations in cities including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Varanasi constituency, Delhi’s Sarai Rohilla, Bhubaneswar, Lucknow, Jaipur, Kota, Thane, Margao (Goa), Tirupati and Puducherry.

The MoU proposes two joint venture options for speedy redevelopment of railway station centred areas. The first being between the Railways and the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) formed for execution of Smart City Plans, with equal share in equity. In the second model, National Buildings Construction Corporation (NBCC) can be roped in with equal share among the three. NBCC can design, develop and execute the redevelopment plans on self-financing basis.

While the Railways takes the responsibility of forming Joint Ventures, the urban development ministry will work with the states and urban local bodies for integrating railway station redevelopment as part of smart city development plans. MoU states that “Both railway station redevelopment and Smart City concepts are part of holistic development of respective city. Redevelopment of railway station and its suburbs as part of Smart City Plans leads to an integrated public transport hub around railway station and encourage Transit Oriented Development.”

[BolliBatlu]

Kochi: Smart solutions to waste management

Internet of Things, wearables, robotics, and embedded electronic products to be utilised as part of the project

The vexed issues of waste management and parking in the city may eventually get smart solutions with electronic start-ups in the State all set to take up the challenge.

‘Smart waste sensing’ and ‘two-wheeler parking slot status detection’ were among the set of five problem statements given to aspiring entrepreneurs at the ‘Bosch DNA Grand Challenge’ held at KINFRA High Tech Park at Kalamassery on Thursday.

Kochi-based Maker Village, one of India’s largest incubators, teamed up with Bosch, a leading global supplier of technology and services, to host the event for electronics start-up companies. ‘Online sound/vibration signal processing tool’, ‘sensor fusion platform for vehicle/passenger safety’, and ‘load measurement of excavators’ were the other problem statements given to the students, and solutions to them fall under the categories of smart city solutions, Internet of Things (IoT), wearables, robotics, and embedded electronic products.