A smart city uses digital technologies to enhance performance and wellbeing, to reduce costs and resource consumption, and to engage more effectively and actively with its citizens. A Smart city seems to be an ideal solution for Indian population of 1.27 billion plus and growing. To accommodate rapid urbanization, the Govt. of India has allocated Rs. 6,000 crore for the smart cities project and to develop infrastructure in another 500 cities. So Is India ready for upgrading cities in Smart cities? Which cities will be considered 1st. What will be working factors in developing Smart cities? In this story we shall try to figure out these questions …
With the growing population and in search of employment & lifestyle more and more people are moving to cities every day. As predicted the world’s urban population will double by 2050. In India, the urban population is currently 31% of the total population and it contributes over 60% of India’s GDP. It is projected that urban India will contribute nearly 75% of the national GDP in the next 15 years. Cities are accordingly referred to as the engines of economic growth and so are required to get smarter to handle this large-scale urbanization and finding new ways to manage complexity, increase efficiency, reduce expenses, and improve quality of life. The smart cities should be able to provide good infrastructure such as water, sanitation, reliable utility services, health care; attract investments; transparent processes that make it easy to run a commercial activities; simple and on line processes for obtaining approvals, and various citizen centric services to make citizens feel safe and happy.
Building blocks of Smart Cities
“The essential features include smart parking and traffic management, smart grids, smart lighting, efficient waste management, etc,” says Mr. Shivanand Samant, CEO, Supreme Housing.
Smart buildings
Smart Building contains complex mechanical devices, sophisticated control systems and to improve the safety, comfort and productivity of occupants. A smart building evolves a M2M communication system that enables sharing of information between smart building systems and components, providing more comfort, more safety, and more security with less money, less energy, and less environmental impact with reduced cost.
Smart Governance
Smart Governance uses technology to facilitate and support better planning and decision making. It improves democratic processes and transforms the ways that public services are delivered. It includes e-government, the efficiency agenda and mobile working. Smart Governance, is public services with greater efficiency, community leadership, mobile working and continuous improvement through innovation.
Smart Grid & Energy
A smart grid is the most important factor of a Smart city by optimization of energy, water, transportation, public health and safety, and other key services to provide a clean, economic and safe environment in which to live, work and play through social media networks resulting in conservation, efficiency and safety. A Smart grid, modernizes power systems through self-healing designs, automation, remote monitoring and control, and establishment of microgrids. It informs and educates consumers about their energy usage, costs and alternative options, to enable them to make decisions autonomously about how and when to use electricity and fuels. And provides safe, secure and reliable integration of distributed and renewable energy resources. All these add up to an energy infrastructure that is more reliable, more sustainable and more resilient. Thus, a smart grid sits at the heart of the smart city, which cannot fully exist without it.
Smart Transportation
To ensure all residents of Smart cities, arrive in time and safely to their workplaces, smart transportations systems play a vital role in dense urban environments. A system could be, intelligent traffic management systems, smart charging for EVs and intelligent public transportation systems. Also, sharing data between the different types of mass transit will make transportation smart.
“A smart city runs on technology-be it electricity, water, sanitation, waste recycling or transport. The aim is to use data to provide effective solutions to residents,” says Mr. Amar Sinha, executive director, Wave Infratech.
Indian Perspective
Indian cities have more population than other nations like Singapore etc and so needs Intelligent and Digital Smart Cities as per the resources availability of Institutional, Economic, Social, Physical Infrastructures need to undertake following MoU between the Central Govt., State Govt., and the Urban Local Body. The funds allocated to each Smart Cities by the Central Government, State Governments and Municipal Corporations or Municipalities will be implemented projects through National Urban Development Corporation. Most of the cities in India face common problems such as traffic, average police activities, unemployment, parking problems at public place and the cities are not clean.
The government has come with an investment of $1.2 billion for 100 smart cities in the next 15 years. With this project the government ensures the basic guidelines of smart city which reduces traffic as it promotes use of green vehicles or more public transport usage, better living conditions as the cities will be clean and it will increase employment. It brings up smart buildings which are “smart” in terms of saving our resources i.e. these buildings are named smart because they will save up to 30% of water usage, 40% of energy usage and the maintenance of these buildings will go down by 10-30%. The central government will provide with the maximum fund which they can and the rest investment goes towards the private sector which is called PPP (Private Public Partnership). Many countries have turned up towards India’s plan of developing 100 smart cities. The government should be supported in all possible manners by its citizen to bring up change in India and lead towards making India a super power.
Government of India has allocated ` 70.6 billion (USD 1.2 billion) for Smart Cities in Budget 2014-15.
Kochi Smart City, Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) in Ahmedabad, Naya Raipur in Chhattishgarh and Wave Infratech’s 4,500-acre smart city near New Delhi are Smart Cities already approved by Govt. of India
Smart Cities of India
-
Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT), Ahmedabad
The city is to be developed over 900 acres, is billed to be one of the country’s first smart cities. It will feature remote management of utilities from a single command centre, use of data analytics and real-time monitoring of services. It will provide high-quality infrastructure to woo finance and technology firms from places such as Mumbai, Bangalore and Gurgaon. It will have a special economic zone, an international education zone, integrated townships, an entertainment zone, hotels, a convention centre, an international techno park, Software Technology Parks of India units, shopping malls, stock exchanges and service units.
-
Wave Infratech Smart City
Wave Infratech is building a 4,500-acre smart city on NH-24, the newest suburb of Delhi, which will be managed by a central command centre. The proposed facilities include automated traffic signals, electricity and water meters custom-made to reduce bills, buses which will send text messages to inform residents of their arrival, mechanised garbage control, fiber optic connectivity, 24X7 security, panic buttons and CCTV surveillance systems.
-
NDMC budget May develop Delhi into a ‘Smart City’,
The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) budget, presented is focused on its ‘smart city’ projects. The projects will certainly help makes national capital, world class smart city. While announcing the council’s annual budget on Wednesday, NDMC chairperson Jalaj Shrivastava talked about the various initiatives taken to bring Delhi at par with other smart cities across the world. These are the steps that will be taken by the council are, Smart Poles: Using/replacing existing 18,500 Street Light Poles to LED and also mounting CCTV Cameras in addition to enable multiple next generation digital services based on WiFi/2G/3G/4G within the NDMC area, without any extra expenditure on the part of the council, on a revenue-sharing model. Solar City Project: Master plan for generation of initially 4MW of solar power after award of NDMC-owned schools and offices’ roof-tops through open tender. Waste-to-Energy Plants: Establishing a chain of waste to energy plants of small sizes in various localities of the NDMC based on different available technologies resulting in 100 per cent recycling of waste in an eco-friendly manner for maximizing power/gas output. It comprises of important buildings like Rashtrapati Bhawan, Parliament House, Supreme Court, North and South Blocks and buildings abutting Central Vista and also all the diplomatic missions which function as territorial entities under the sovereign jurisdiction of their Flag States.
-
Kochi Smart City
Spread in 100 hectares, will have a special economic zone replicate to Dubai’s smart city project.
-
Naya Raipur
-
Seven Smart Cities along the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor.
Conclusion
Smart Cities are a urgent call of the time for our country. Such cities will not only gives, better life-style & optimizes usage of resources but also, makes Indian urban areas a world class living experience similar to what we see in Europe & America. It is good that central & state Govt have taken initiatives of build new & upgrade existing cities to smart cities.
