The concept of a Smart City is gaining momentum, growing extensively in the Asia Pacific region, and it will spearhead the next cycle of e-Government evolution. Singapore is a lead example of this phenomenon, wherein IoT deployments are being implemented through its Smart Nation program, and we will see this happen throughout Asia as massive urbanization makes the continent a hotspot for smart city deployments.
In India, which is on the brink of an urban revolution, one in every two Indians is expected to live in urban areas by 2050. This migration is creating an increasing need for basic services such as sanitation, waste management, street lighting, surveillance, and even Wi-Fi access, presenting a huge opportunity for the government to urbanise India. In fact, better, smarter urban growth could be an economic opportunity for India worth up to 6% of GDP by mid-century.
But given the resource crunch in most large cities, how can the government use minimum resources for maximum impact? The solution lies in enabling multiple solutions on a single platform that provides optimal urban coverage.
Take the example of Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority (GNIDA) that is planning to install ¡®smart poles¡¯ across the city in 2017. This integrated lamp post will be equipped with CCTV cameras, LED lights, and Wi-Fi routers, and occupy marginal physical space. Installing the country¡¯s public transportation system with sensors can also enable the government to improve connectivity in urban areas. Madhya Pradesh, the state with the highest amount of funds allocated for Smart Cities among other states, is looking at an intelligent public transportation system that not only ensures optimised bus routes, but also provides a better sense of resource management to the administration.
The government¡¯s Make in India initiative clearly calls out that investments of about US$1.2 trillion (over Rs 81 lakh crores!) will be required over the next 20 years across areas such as transportation, energy and public security to build smart infrastructure in India. But it¡¯s not something that can be achieved without collaboration with the industry, and even citizens.
Think of it like this ¨C real time information will be fed from our connected devices, leading to accumulation of relevant data at the backend which will be managed by a technology company; the real use of this crowd sourced, analyzed data will be when the government strengthens or rejigs the infrastructure to ensure a more relevant smart city based on citizen needs.
Governments across countries in Asia are already experimenting with novel ways of obtaining data, one of which includes ordinary citizens helping to monitor air pollution using their smartphones, sparing the expensive installation of thousands of sensors throughout the country. In Singapore, next-generation government services are expected to be based on chatbots that will function as digital representatives, simulating human behaviour to make interactions simpler, more efficient, and more consistent. No doubt then, the measurement of certain data points is becoming a citizen social movement in which the consumer is at the center of the network.
Currently, a key vulnerability of backend systems is the pressure placed on communications network. For example, one reason that smart CCTV infrastructure has so far been unsuccessful is due to the difficulty in transmitting high-quality video around limited bandwidth, the reason being that 2G, 3G and 4G technologies were primarily catering only towards people-to-people communication in India. But with 5G, we can expect industrial-scale internet and it will revolutionise how different industries are connected.
And as India moves towards the era of 5G, networks will require to be more flexible and extensible in the services they perform. Luckily for India, the country can quickly accelerate to 5G since the capabilities of this technology are eloquently aligned with the Digital India vision, the fabric that drives the concept of Smart Cities. No doubt there will be challenges to address as these new technologies take shape to make technology more and more pervasive in our lives, but it will be imperative to make our cities smarter as the country continues to urbanize at a rapid pace.
Kavitha Mohammad is Director, Industry Solutions Group, Asia Pacific and Japan, at Intel