2021-04-01 Park Young-sun, Kolkata Trade Center, India
– 100 smart cities designated by the Indian government –
– From bottom-up to develop projects according to local conditions
Governments and organizations around the world are striving to find solutions to various problems such as traffic, crime, and the environment that occur in the process of urbanization. In areas with a rapidly growing urban population, these problems cannot be effectively solved in the traditional way. In this background, the concept of a smart city arose.
India's urban population is an official statistic surveyed in 10, 2011 years ago, reaching 3 million, representing 7000% of the total population. Considering the continuing increase in urban population, the current urban population is expected to be larger than this number. In the past few years, India has faced various problems caused by urbanization, and to solve this problem, the Indian government launched the Smart City Mission (SCM) in 31 and selected 2015 target cities across the country.
The Smart City Mission is a plan to develop some areas of each city and expand its effect to nearby areas. Local governments across India, excluding West Bengal, participated to designate at least one city per state as a smart city. With financial support from the central and local governments, each city decided to promote various development projects from 2017 to 2022, and to derive the results after 2022. Each smart city designated city decided to carry out the actual business by establishing a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) that acts as a development project.
In the early stages, there was a lot of confusion about the concept of a smart city. The solution to this was to adopt a bottom-up urban planning approach that considers each level of urban development, available resources, and citizens' wishes, instead of establishing a common concept. Therefore, the Indian government did not prepare guidelines to apply any specific model to smart cities, but let each city prepare its own concept, vision, mission, and plan according to local circumstances. Accordingly, in the case of Bhubaneshuwa City in Odisha, the investment scale of the project was set at $6 million, of which $4000 million was decided to be prepared through a public-private partnership (PPP). In the case of Indore, Madhya Pradesh, the more ambitious $3 billion was proposed, the city of Kochi, Kerala, $6000 million, and Punesi, of $14 million.
The largest portion of each smart city development project is the maintenance of transportation facilities, and the total budget is $48 billion. In addition, water supply, sewage treatment, and drainage facilities are showing a large scale of 5000 billion dollars. The total number of smart city projects in India is 42, with a total budget of $8000 billion, of which 3700 projects costing $194 billion have been completed. In more detail, the completed projects include 2000 smart road projects, 21 smart solar projects, 8000 smart sewage treatment projects, and 959 smart water supply projects.
Smart City Case
In the case of Faridabad, located near New Delhi, a state-of-the-art integrated control center that mainly provides real-time traffic control services is installed and operated. The Adaptive Traffic Control System (ATCS) application is specifically designed to minimize traffic congestion in urban areas. The big problem of Ahmedabad city in Gujarat state is that a lot of time is wasted searching for parking spaces in the city and it causes traffic congestion. According to one survey, 25% of traffic congestion is caused by efforts to secure parking spaces. Intelligent Parking Systems has emerged to solve this problem. Using this system, drivers can receive information about parking spaces and get directions to that location. The mobile application running in the city of Ahmedabad is called'AmdaPark' and can be conveniently used by all citizens. The city of Uzen in Madhya Pradesh has set up an integrated command and control center (ICCC), which consists of a control room, a control room, a server room, and an electrical room.
Ujjain City situation room photo
Source: http://ujjainsmartcity.com
Pune City's Pimpri-Chinchwad area planned a bicycle-sharing system to create a pollution-free city. Each bike is equipped with GPS, so you can check the location of the bike in real time. In addition, a solar panel is installed in the basket attached to the front of the handle, so it can be easily charged, and there is also a smart locking device using the Internet of Things method. Bangalore City requires citizens who use buses to pay fare using QR codes, while Lucknow City, Uttar Pradesh, has installed an integrated traffic management system to perform functions such as speed detection and traffic control.
The city of Aurangabad is installing 50 digital outdoor billboards. This signboard provides important information such as Aurangabad's cultural heritage, tourism, traffic conditions, air pollution levels, and bus times, while also posting advertisements to help the city's finances. The city of Chandigarh has installed 5000 smart electric meters as part of the smart grid project, and Haryana is planning to install 300 million smart meters for home by 2024. Mr. CEO of CyanConnode, a smart grid-related company. According to Anil Daulani, smart grid technology reduces electricity losses and energy costs and opens up new opportunities for tech companies.
Kolkata City's New Town installed solar-powered street lights, CCTVs, and internet hotspots on smart streets in January 2021. In the case of the solar bench, it is designed so that when a passer-by sits on the bench, the light installed above it is automatically ignited. Solar trees are also planned to be installed, where solar panels act as leaves on artificial tree trunks. Meanwhile, the city of Mumbai plans to install a network measuring pollution levels in 1 districts of the city over the next five years.
There are also cases where drones are being used in smart cities. Varanasi, located in northern India, used drones to spray disinfectant in pandemic hotspot areas in the city during the COVID-19 pandemic. The drones used GPS to identify terrain and movement paths in advance and then flew around to spray disinfectant. In the case of Karnataka, drones are being used to monitor illegal occupation and fires in forest areas.
As shown in the above case, a variety of technologies are being used in a wide variety of smart city projects in India. Project areas with high demand for future participation by domestic companies are IoT sensors, drones, air pollution monitoring, building energy efficiency, IoT-based smart street lights, water and sewage management, smart water meter, and renewable energy.
Source: Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Ahmedabad City, Smartnet, Tdworld, Water Technology Net, The Wire, The Better India, Vilindia, Business Stanard, Economic Times, The Hindu Business Line, KOTRA Kolkata Trade Center, etc.