If the concept of Smart City is delivered as promised, it will bring in smart solutions both for government and people. However, not much progress has been seen, other than announcing the names of the cities and most recently the names of consultants aiding in this project. So where is the bottleneck?
Right after the announcement of the Smart City vision, budgetary allocations were provided, policy guidelines drafted, selection criteria finalized, consultants short-listed, candidate city proposals evaluated and 98 cities chosen. The 98 local governments across the country have also been prompt in identifying and appointing consultants to prepare Smart City development plans to be submitted to the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD). The structure of the staged process towards selection of up to 20 cities in the first phase is rightly in place, with proposals from competing cities due mid-December.
The Ministry is also making considerable progress in policies that exploit technology in transforming the urban socio-economic landscape. Besides, the relaxation of FDI eligibility thresholds aimed at the creation of Smart Cities provides the financial platform for technology-enabled urban regions. However, though the Smart City project has been launched by the Government of India, its momentum and success depends on the participation of all involved - stakeholders, including state legislatures, private sector entities and interested foreign governments. “Due to the sheer scale of the 100 Smart City project, and given that the budget will be allotted over the next five years, we do not expect to see results overnight. As of now, the Smart City project is in its design phase, with consultancy firms preparing action plans for the proposed cities,†says Manish Sharma, President CEAMA and Managing Director - Panasonic India & South Asia.
According to CN Raghupathi, Senior Vice President and Head, India Business Unit – Infosys, Smart Cities is a complex concept and requires multidimensional planning, coordination and execution. “The current stage is that of deliberation and planning. Having said that, there are however several challenges on the ground such as taking the debate from basic infrastructure to that of integration, economic development and smarter systems. Financing these smart cities is another challenge to be addressed. It is no doubt an uphill task but things have started moving on ground.â€
“We were delighted to know about India’s bold initiative towards a Smart City and the country’s 100 Smart Cities Mission, as announced by the India PM in June this year. India is a vast country and people naturally move to urban areas due to better job opportunities and a better standard of living. The rising population growth in mega cities such as Mumbai and Delhi may be a key challenge to the government as their needs will be different from smaller cities. It is an ambitious plan, so it would be advisable to take gradual steps and engage citizens on a community level to know their needs, so that solutions can be created based on feedback,†says Santhosh D’ Souza, Director- Systems Engineering, NetApp Marketing & Services Pvt. Ltd India.
He further continues, “The very fact that the Central Government had to launch an over-arching Smart City framework in collaboration with State government and City authorities points to the infrastructural lacunae across our cities. Previous attempts at urban renewal and city/state-level efforts not-withstanding, we do have some distance to traverse before our cities attain “smart†status.â€
According to him, countries such as France and United Kingdom have supported the government’s decision and have gone a step further and guaranteed aid. “Now that new industrial corridors have been introduced, incentives for manufacturing units and measures to promote investments in the development of factories, airports, ports and roads will ensure that India attracts investors in all sectors that contribute to the building of Smart Cities,†he adds.
HP’s vision for Future Cities is one that is a self-sustaining ecosystem that allows efficient and effective utilization and management of resources like energy and water. HP’s vision focuses around a citizen and community centric approach that calls for open and collaborative systems allowing transparency and public access to data, eventually leading to citizen empowerment, effective e-governance and economic growth. “Governments around the world partner with HP to radically transform what they do and how they operate, to shift from an output-based paradigm to a citizen-centric government focused on results and public value,†says Lux Rao, Country Leader – HP Future Cities & CTO – Technology Services, HP India Sales.
How to turn Smart City into a Reality?
What is required to make Smart City a reality is long-term planning. The purpose of Smart Cities is to create a sustainable future and it is the duty of all the stakeholders involved in it to set common targets and clearly defined goals for urban development and work in cohesion. “Our Sustainable Smart Town (SST), Fujisawa, in Japan, endures because we have outlined a roadmap for the next century, which we hold as our reference point,†cites Manish.
In 2007, Panasonic jointly laid down the town development policy with the local government for Fujisawa, under the Town Development Council. The goal was to create a smart growth community that could support sustainable development for at least 100 years. “We followed a consortium model of 18 companies, of which Panasonic was at the helm, together identifying our core priorities for sustainability, which were energy, security, mobility, healthcare and community. A consortium model is ideal for the building of a smart city as each entity, public or private, can best leverage its expertise to provide economical Smart City solutions,†Manish says.
One aspect of Smart City that Raghupathi clearly points out is the challenge to have all stakeholders take responsibility and ownership of the smart city implementation. “This should not remain a consultant driven project with its relevance fading past the expiry of consulting contracts. We believe participation and accountability are the first degree steps towards achieving the Smart Cities dream. There may be a need to create new institutional structures to achieve this. An entrepreneurial approach that will make the real difference,†he exclaims.
Finally, he also believes that the Smart Cities Mission should be seen in conjugation with the wider Digital India, Housing for All, Make in India, Skill India and Clean India missions. “There is no reason that the Digital India infrastructure cannot be leased to fund local governments, the housing for all cannot have smart monitoring of structural integrity and service levels, clean India funds cannot help the walking infrastructure and its upkeep. The possibilities are many,†he says.
Concept-building is at the foundation of any smart city. Municipalities and developers need to clarify what kind of smart city they want to create, taking in the social, economic and environmental contexts and bandwidths of their localities. Many conventional smart cities focus on a high level of infrastructure, smart energy, and are product and technology oriented. But whatever the vision may be, it is only with clarity and coordination that projects can work as per their timelines.
Having defined the scope of the Smart Cities project, it seems quite evident that only information technology can overcome the scale of the challenges. At the heart of the project is the concept of sustainable and safe eco-systems: self-sustaining neighborhoods, efficient and planned traffic management, access to citizen services from home rather than in civic offices. The all pervasive use of IT is the foundation on which these smart cities will be built. “In the long run, the IT infrastructure should be able to cater to transaction volumes on a diverse set of applications at scale, automate processes with fail-safe mechanisms built-in, and make living in these cities a considerably richer experience. Needless to say, this will result in a huge amount of data: e-governance applications generating large amounts of structured data, civic amenity-related applications simultaneously producing large amounts of unstructured data. If Information Technology is the foundation of a Smart City, a robust, agile and efficient Data Storage, Services and Management architecture will be the Keystone in its arch,†states Santosh.
For NEC however, Smart City is a reality. “As one of the first companies to promote the Smart City concept, NEC created our motto – We Make Cities Safer – to reflect our commitment to help cities flexibly respond to challenges that arise during the development of urban and industrial infrastructure. As cities evolve, city planners have used advanced technologies also adapt to address the challenges that many cities face such as industrial growth and rising population. In this respect, the Smart City concept is actually closer to reality than what others might think,†asserts Koichiro Koide, MD - NEC India.
Opportunities for vendors… The Government of India’s ‘100 Smart City’ initiative has spelt new opportunities and added a new dimension for the brands participating in it. It is little wonder that these brands would always want Smart City to be a successful initiative. NEC has already successfully deployed its advanced Face Recognition System in Surat Safe City for Surat Police, and at Lemon Tree Premier, Delhi Airport in India. These solutions empower security teams to prevent crime by offering real-time blacklist and white-list management using highly intelligent live CCTV feed analysis. In addition, NEC is also working with the Government of Andhra Pradesh to provide comprehensive safety and security solutions in the city of Tirupati. In India, Panasonic showcased its smart solutions at a seminar in association with CREDAI this August, demonstrating the full range of solutions that Panasonic offers for the development of smart cities. Its products and services have been effectively utilized in Panasonic’s Fujisawa model town, where each home includes its integrated suite of technology centric applications from home appliances, security and surveillance solutions, energy management systems, displays, business communications systems and even entertainment solutions. These include solar power panels, public and private HD surveillance cameras, LED street lights with motion sensors, wireless video door phones in every home, and consumer products designed to promote zero carbon footprint homes through integrated energy creation, storage and saving systems. “Given India’s rapidly changing urban landscape, Panasonic hopes to continue to work closely with real estate developers in India to understand their requirements on local smart city projects,†says Manish. Infosys has a multi-pronged approach to Smart Cities. “While we are actively building capabilities in the domain via Industry partnerships, we are also engaged with key ministries, consultants, IT service providers, Energy and Power companies, Transport solution providers etc. in defining Smart Cities for India,†cites Raghupathi. Infosys has developed significant capabilities in e-governance and citizen centric projects through its involvement in multiple central and state level projects in India. On top of this, it managed to achieve significant advancements in urban and digital infrastructure development, creating and managing urban services, and incorporating smart technologies to achieve unparalleled efficiencies in its smart campuses across India. Infosys has strong capabilities in Internet of Things (IoT) and are creating platforms to serve the needs of smart cities. “We are also working on our consulting frameworks and solutions in the space, seeking to provide holistic and integrated solutions from strategy to implementation. We will keenly watch the developments in this space and we hope that some innovative engagement models would evolve to engage IT industry for such complex and prestigious mission,†he adds. NetApp is also actively engaged in developing differentiated, mature solutions with technology and consulting partners in the Internet of Things (IoT) space. “We have delivered designs that respond to requirements in the areas of Mobility, M2M (Machine To Machine) interactions, Smart Energy Grids, Transportation and Smart Cities. In the context of Smart Cities, where virtually everything is collecting data and interacting with other things as well as with datacentres, the impact on storage is going to be immense. Our Data Storage, Services and Management portfolio enables highly available data access, unrivalled efficiency and optimal performance at scale; all of which are critical for government and civic functions. Our platforms are highly responsive as they employ low-latency Flash technology on all tiers in a data path,†explains Santosh.
What is next… The Smart City is indeed a bold and a very ambitious step as pointed by many. But the first step is always crucial as it lays the blueprint for the city, on the basis of which potential sponsors and service-providers will come together to raise funds and invest in the development of Smart Cities. The key challenges as pointed out by Santosh would be however to ensure a relatively painless process through which a city, whose infrastructure is already subject to heavy usage, evolves into a “smart†city. Another challenge would be ensuring the consistent and firm application of world-class norms across several cities and across agencies within each city as projects begin to get executed. Finally a technology architecture that is standards-based, with components defined comprehensively in terms of features and operational characteristics will go a long way in time-bound delivery on objectives. There are also several live examples and similar projects executed in various cities across the world to learn from. Studying the life-cycle of those projects would ensure that we avoid pit-falls and apply the learnings from them up-front in defining our projects.
