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Limitations in implementation of the Smart
city concept in Tier II cities of India and
solutions therein :A technical perspective
Rupali Sherekar
Dept. of Master in Computer Application
Prof. Ram Meghe Institute of Technology and Research, Badnera Amravati, India
[email protected]
Abstract : The definition of Smart City says “Asmart cityis anurban developmentvision to integrate multipleinformation and communication technology(ICT) solutions in asecurefashion to manage a city’s assets.
“ This means that a smart
city aims at
improving quality of lifeby seamlessly blending technology in the day to day lives of citizens and resultantly leading to betterment of services inorder to meet the needs of residents.According to the Indian Government “Smart City offers sustainability in terms of economic activities and employment opportunities to a wide section of its residents, regardless of their level of education, skills or income levels."
This paper puts forward the expectations of populations- from Tier II cities of India - in the form of smart solutions from a smart city. The paper tries to point out the rift between the standard definitions of a smart city and its needs according to the demography of Tier II cities. The limitations in terms of application of technology considering the economic strata of the population, technical literacy and faith in technology. Conclusively there is a listing of feasible smart solutions(technical) for Tier II cities which actually redefines the Smart City concept for smaller cities which over a period can evolve into actually smart cities.
I INTRODUCTION
The definition of Smart City says “A smart city is an urban development vision to integrate multiple information and communication technology (ICT) solutions in a secure fashion to manage a city’s assets. “ This means that a smart city aims at improving quality of life by seamlessly blending technology in the day to day lives of citizens and resultantly leading to betterment of services in order to meet the needs of its residents.
According to the Indian Government “Smart City offers sustainability in terms of economic activities and employment opportunities to a wide section of its residents, regardless of their level of education, skills or income levels."
The definition of smart is actually relative. When a city is chosen for conversion into a smart city, the base case matters. Actually, rather than adhering to a stringent definition of a smart city Tier II towns may take a path towards becoming smarter than they actually were.
This paper discusses these gaps between the present states of Tier II and Tier I cities and how they may affect the implementation of the smart city concept and try to find an optimized way of making our Tier II towns actually smart.
II DISCUSSION
On therecommendation of the sixth pay commission and Reserve Bank of India Indian cities are classified solely on the basis of their populations in categories namely X ,Y and Z commonly known as Tier I, Tier II and Tier III cities respectively.
Practically, the factors that separate a tier I from a tier II or III location may not be totally scientific, there is agreement that tiers are determined by informal measurement of infrastructure considerations, including quality of life elements, schools, housing, safety, availability of medical assistance, and other amenities
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options(other than the mundane ones) and any luring employment opportunies for the cream students. This results in deportation of the educated employable cream class from to bigger cities adding to the repressed growth of smaller.Many two tier cities like Nagpur, Lucknow, Jaipur, Chandigarh etc have a foundation of good infrastructure, employment opportunities and industrial investments while others like Amravati, Raipur Faridabad etc.are far behind in these amenities. So there in fact is a gap between the level at which various cities categorized as Tier II lie, which implies that the comprehensive development plan for cities at the same category will also be diverse.
III GENERAL EXPECTATIONS FROM A SMART CITY WITH RESPECT TO ICT
Generally almost every smart city proposal consists of
Efficient public transport
Less carbon footprint
Improvement in industrialization
Cleaner city
Intelligent Traffic Management
Intelligent Car Parking
Intelligent street lighting
Smart Signages
Smart metering
Seamless internet
Rain water harvesting
Solar roof tops
Underground cabling
Efficient Solid Waste Management
Etc..
Of the above mentioned proposals almost 80% are related to ICT. So a robust IT infrastructure with seamless internet connectivity supported by applications to facilitate the above mentioned requirements is a necessity.
IV DEMOGRAPHIC DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TIER I AND TIER II CITIES OF INDIA Tier I cities have huge investments in the industrial and service sectors. The vast availability of job opportunities in these cities attracts knowledge workers from all over the country. This influx has resulted in a crunch for commercial and residential spaces. The ever busy working population of these metros has splurged a need for ultra tech facilities which has eased and improved the quality of life here. Services ranging from efood providers to good
public transport, egovernance to ehealthcare have already taken these cities closer to the smart city destination.
The acceptance of these facilities and its mass usage due to the time crunch faced by the working class has made these facilities a success and justified their need.
Contrasting this with Tier II cities, these facilities actually do not find much significance in smaller cities as the population has
Lesser work hours
Lesser commutation time
Lesser working women
Or part time working women
Lesser geographical expanse of cities resulting in lesser time to reach any place. The main generator of many of the smart facilities in metros is time crunch which is not a major issue in Tier II cities due to the factors mentioned above. Hence the smartness requirements of Tier II cities have to be defined according to its demography , size and culture. These of course will change with the course of time as the city grows but for a beginning the evolution and conversion of a Tier II city in a smart city requires the following basics:
1. Controlled traffic
2. Centrally coordinated traffic signals 3. Easy and readiliy available public transport 4. Smart(traffic congestion based) street
lights(specially in lanes)
5. Organized markets for farmers(through ICT) 6. Easy apps and techniques that identify the soil, predict the market and advise farmers on yields.
7. Organized selling of groceries to ration card holders only through web based computer applications with easy biometric authentication by members on the card.
8. Awareness and publicity of local helpline numbers. Many times local help (like 100) also does not respond( my personal experience). This log where calls to emergency numbers go unanswered should be monitored and the guilty punished. 9. Installation of cameras at traffic signals. 10. Strict implementation of no honking zones
with smart monitoring of defaulters. A weekday with no honking can be followed.
11. Covered drainages(ICT to identify clogging) 12. Industrial investments resulting in
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13. Smart meters(Water and electricity).
14. Organized selling buying of basic needs like vegetables and groceries
15. Assured water supply 16. Underground cabling
17. Effective public transport so as to reduce the use of personal vehicles. Here again counseling sessions on car pooling, use of bicycles etc. for car pooling offices and colleges can group people according to their residential addresses and impose car pooling on them. Organizations should allot parking spaces to groups according to residential addresses. And single individuals commuting in cars to workplaces could be levied with parking fees.
18. Solar electricity generation plants.
19. Use of solar energy for powering households at subsidized rates.
20. Naming of sectors and lanes for easy access to unknown addressses
21. POTABLE drinking water in all the seasons 22. Covered drainage
23. Heavy fines and strict regulation for driving without helmets/seatbelts
24. Development of open spaces in playgrounds, parks and open gyms
25. Easy and abundant and affordable availability of atleast basic health care facilities.
V PROPOSAL POINTS THAT REQUIRE A ROBUST INFORMATION COMMUNICATION
TECHNOLOGY ARCHITECTURE
Of the above mentioned points the first 12 come directly under the purview of ICT and the few of the remaining require an indirect involvement of ICT.
A. A brief elaboration of ICT infrastructure requirements corresponding to above mentioned points 1 to 13
For Smart Street Lights: Firstly the original street lights could be replaced with solar powered lights in sunny areas or LEDs otherwise. This results in heavy reduction in energy consumption as well as heavy cost savings.
Second step would be installations The basic component of a smart street lighting system is the intelligent lamppost, which integrates these three blocks:
1. Advanced power stages (lamp ballast or driver) aimed to drive the lamps with the highest efficiency 2. Communication interfaces to allow the assembly of a digitally monitored, secure, and reliable network 3. An optional addition of various smart sensors to monitor weather conditions, lamppost inclination, and air pollution.
An 8-bit or a 32-bit microcontroller handles all the functions needed to drive the lamp and, at the same time, manages all the data for implementing a smart street lighting network. Wired or wireless communication can be used. The communication is bi-directional, and the monitored system can send and receive information and commands to and from the lamp. Dimming levels and turn-on/turn-off commands depend on the time of day, road conditions, or the natural lighting conditions of the moment and traffic which is sensed through gesture recognition. A fallen or tilted lamp can also be identified with an ultra-low-power, high performance, three axes linear “nano” accelerometer. The sensors also enable the adjustment of illumination levels of the lamps depending on light conditions or humidity.
Identification of Noise pollution levels: The same lamps can have sensors to identify noise levels.
Centrally CoordinatedTraffic Signals: Traffic lights can be centrally controlled by monitors or by computers to allow them to be coordinated in real time
to deal with changing traffic patterns. Non-coordinated sensors occasionally impede traffic by detecting a lull and turning red just as cars arrive from the previous light. The most high-end systems use dozens of sensors and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per intersection, but can very finely control traffic levels. This relieves the need for other measures (like new roads) which are even more expensive.
The techniques used to monitor traffic patterns across a city could be
Video cameras on traffic signal posts or
Sensors buried in the pavement or
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a lull at a particular signal and help in changing the signals.
Marketing Intelligence for farmers : Marketing Intelligence consists of people, equipment, and procedures to gather, sort, analyze, evaluate and distribute timely and accurate information to decision markets. It facilitates marketing decisions, directs the competitive process and simplifies marketing mechanisms. Marketing intelligence should provide information that is necessarily accurate, timely and understandable so that a farmer may decide how much to produce, when and where to sell and a trader may expand trade.The selling and buying process should be centrally managed with same rates throughout the country for a particular grade of produce similar to the gold rates standardization . The product grading process can also be standardized and automated using computer vision systems.
Intelligence based marketing will require a Research and Development cell with experts from Artificial Intelligence and agriculture who work in tandem for continuous upgradation of an already developed based system. This in turn will generate employment at the local level as the local research will largely be affected by geographical location of a place. The environmental conditions, rains, kind of tradionally cultivated crops promotion and motivation for venturing into new crop growths will all be local to an area. This intelligence can be made available for free through mobile apps and websites in local languages.
Organized selling of groceries to ration card holders only through web based computer applications : With easy biometric authentication by any one member on the card, selling of groceries to ration card holders can be done only through web based computer applications. This will require a simple web based application with a database of all ration card holders and will surely end the apathy of card holders harassed by “rationed control shop” holders. Also a training program on the concerned website usage to ration shop owners could be made mandatory.
Ensuring the actual availability of local helpline numbers: A monitoring on the logs of local helpline numbers should be made to ensure that sos calls never go unanswered. The unanswered call logs should be summarized at the month end and the officers on duty could be penalized in the form of salary cuts or deduction of leaves. The objective being, simple inculcation of a sense of responsibility. Such a system would require a simple call log
monitor which works together with the database having details of the officer on duty. It could also be connected to the salary generator which would automatically calculate the deducted salary.
Covered Drainages : Implementation of covered drainages with sensors to identify clogs will require geographically mapped sensors that detect and report clogs to a centralized controller so as to identify the location of clogs.
Smart meters: Smart electricity and water meters that give warnings on excess usage per day or per month.
B. Limitations in Implementation of proposed infrastructure(budgetry and political constraints ignored):
The major hindrance to implementation of above mentioned proposals are
Absence of a robust IT infrastructure
Lack of computer literacy
Lack of faith in technology
Fear of technology
Failure of facilities in reaching the beneficiaries
C. Solutions therein:
Establishment of free wifi kiosks with trainers to educate web application users. These kiosks can be set up throughout the city with appointed trainers or the trainings can be made available in the form of mobile applications. The trainers should be trained in usage of the software applications as well as in psychology to boost up the psychology of technology averse citizens(ex:farmers).
Mass Awareness programs to publicize the facilities available for all classes and education on availing those facilities.
Retention of the intelligent and the young generation - for education ,employment or self entrepreneurship - of the city is an important step towards making it smart cause this young class will make a better use of the smarter options and crave for more, helping the city become smarter and smarter
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well as maintain the workforce in these cities. This strategy parallels companies moving offices or headquarters domestically from urban areas to more rural, less cosmopolitan areas parts of the country, and the need to recruit into and retain employees in these areasCONCLUSION:
Requirements of Tier II cities differ from the needs of Tier I cities. The differences between the two and the requirements of smaller towns have been put forward through this paper.
Smaller towns have quite controlled levels of pollution. If the city is not at all industrially developed the major pollution generators are vehicles. This carbon emissions can be efficiently brought under control through an efficient public transport system. As a matter of fact traffic congestion is not a major issue in small cities, so introduction of proper public transport can even restrain the need for more flyovers and new roads. These finances can be used in the construction of smart roads i. e. roads with smart lightings and corrdinated traffic lights and parking spaces.
The major hindrance (apart from financial) in the implementation of these IT based smart city proposals for the benefit of the common man are technological illiteracy and a mental block preventing the use of technology. Once this hurdle is crossed there is no stopping a Tier II town from becoming holistically smart city.
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