Building a Smart City Landscape in India

Before understanding more about the smart city components, it is essential for us to identify some of the key problems faced by citizens in the Indian landscape

By IBM
Updated: Jan 14, 2015 03:10:41 PM UTC
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Of late, there has been a lot of buzz around smart cities in India. The idea behind this is to bring in cutting-edge technological innovations to the Indian society with the ultimate objective of improving the the quality of life of its citizens. In the past few months, all of us who are in touch with current affairs would have heard the term "smart cities" being repeatedly used in various contexts and that would have raised a question in our minds about the next strides that would be taken in the direction of setting up such cities in India.

Recently, there was a policy document which was released by the government of India with regard to their plan of action for the creation of smart cities. In this piece, I summarise some of the key smart components of Indian cities which are in various stages of planning. Before understanding more about the smart city components, it is essential for us to identify some of the key problems faced by citizens in the Indian landscape. This will help us to appreciate the role of smart city components in addressing these pain points.

Day in the Life of an Indian Citizen Activity 1 : Citizen hurriedly gets ready to attend a meeting at a client's place. But he is unable to make it to the meeting in time because of traffic which might have been caused by some on-going maintenance activity. This problem could have been avoided if there was a provision for the citizen to understand the work-in-progress maintenance activity.

This problem can be solved by having a smart transportation system which has the capability to track and send real-time mobile alerts to citizens if there is a block in any of the approaching roads.

Activity 2 : After having been stuck in traffic for a long time, the citizen finally reached his destination. Then, he had to hunt for a parking space. That took about half an hour.

This problem can be solved by having a smart parking system which would direct a visitor on entry to a specific location where a parking slot is available.

Activity 3 : At the end of a hectic day, the citizen hurries home, and on reaching, finds  two bills on the table: Electricity bill and water bill. He feels that the bill amounts are unusually high, and wonders if they have taken into account (mistakenly, of course) the electricity and water consumption of his neighbours.

This problem can be solved with a smart grid system which can track the usage of power and water and send real-time consumption units and rates to the citizen’s mobile.

Activity 4: In the middle of the night, the citizen's aged mother falls ill and has to be rushed to the hospital.  The doctor finds serious imbalance in various body parameters, and has to act upon them immediately.

This situation can be avoided with a smart health care system which has a wearable device to monitor an aged citizen’s vital body parameters, such that doctors/ family members are alerted before hand when the parameters start showing signs of variation. This could eventually save many lives.

The above scenarios demonstrate some of the pain points in an Indian citizen’s life.

Another key thing for Indians is the safety of women and children. One possible solution is to use CCTVs, wearable devices and mobile applications which can be used to alert police officials in case of any danger. However for this to work effectively, it is essential to ensure that proper systems are in place to capture and monitor the data on these devices so that timely remediation steps can be taken.

The smart city infrastructure is designed to address all of these and some additional pain points which are faced by Indian citizens. The key components of the planned smart city initiatives in India are :
•    Smart parking systems
•    Smart grids
•    Smart health care systems
•    Smart transportation systems
•    Smart public safety systems

Apart from these, there are also plans of building smart systems for:
•    Environment management
•    Digital signage
•    Urban lighting
The underlying technology which forms the basis of these smart city initiatives is the Internet of Things (IoT).

IoT is at the forefront of the digital universe. It is a technology which is used to interconnect embedded objects / devices like sensors, mobile devices and so on, and facilitate communication among them without the need for any human intervention. IoT becomes very prominent in the present era where the number of internet-connected devices (12.5 billion) have surpassed the number of human beings (7 billion) on the planet in 2011, and by 2020, internet-connected devices are expected to range between 26 billion and 50 billion globally.

The underlying business objective  for setting up smart cities in India is to create ac$15 billion 'Internet of Things (IoT)' industry in India in the next six years, thereby creating a host of new job opportunities in the country in various industrial sectors. IoT offers promising opportunities for telecom operators & system integrators. From the IT industry perspective, IoT will open up new opportunities to provide services, analytics and applications.

The creation of IoT-based platforms for setting up smart city initiatives is not an activity which can happen overnight. The first step for setting up an IoT platform is the creation of a proper digital infrastructure for India. In order to ensure this, the digital India programme has been launched. This programme aims at ‘transforming India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy’ and will also provide the required impetus for the development of the IoT industry in India. The key to the success of IoT technology in India lies in building scalable low-cost open platforms which have the capability to share data amongst the diverse government domains.

For smart cities to be successful in the Indian context, it is very important to make citizens realise the importance of such cities and the benefits which it would offer to them. Smart cities awareness sessions and talks in various parts of the country should be the first step in the implementation of smart city initiatives in the country. This will urge citizens to support the steps which are taken in the direction of setting up smart cities. And their equal participation is essential for smart cities to succeed.

- By Anupama Raman , Curriculum Architect & Lead – Smarter Cities,
Smarter Cities, Smarter Commerce and Curam Client Success Education and Enablement team

Reference
IoT policy document which was released by government of India (Available at http://deity.gov.in/content/internet-things)

Disclaimer : This blog is intended to convey the views of the author and not the organization

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.

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