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Can Technological Solutions And Social Innovations Tackle Challenges Faced By Our Cities?

“There is a lot more differentiation we need in infrastructure especially in context to our smart cities," stated Ramakrishna, JVS Head Sales, Smart Cities L&T Construction

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Can technological solutions and social innovations tackle challenges faced by our cities? This is a big concern concerning the creation of a healthy eco-system for solutions generation for ensuring the smart cities of present and future. Deliberating on this compelling topic at BW Businessworld Smart Cities Conclave in Patna, a number of experts came together to discuss the ideas and issues at hand as India is at the cusp of a digital revolution which is behind the evolution of smart cities.

Talking about smart lighting, in this age of liveability and sustainability, Subrata Sen, Head Enterprise Business, Havells India said, “Lighting has a direct impact on the quality, status, and grading of a city. Good lighting gives a sense of pride to the citizens of a city and also reduces the anti-social elements of a city which is a key safety concern for a city administration.”

Ramakrishna, JVS Head Sales, Smart Cities L&T Construction stated, “There is a lot more differentiation we need in infrastructure especially in context to our smart cities. One of the key measures of a city’s development is urbanization, while it presents a lot of opportunities, it also presents a lot of issues, with one being technology,”

Talking about focussing on various domains of aspects of a smart city, Sumit Pamecha, Regional Lead- IoT & Smart + Connected Communities, CISCO said, “We need to focus on the magnitude of the urbanization, with more and more people moving to urban areas which is estimated to be around 10,000 people moving to urban areas per hour, equal to one new London every month, a whole new blueprint has to be created to see how a city can be made smarter 5 to 10 years from now. Our approach is that there are several domains in a city and each of them will generate the humongous amount of data. Our challenge is to bring it together in the nerve centre of a city and a fully connected platform. A platform approach addresses these challenges and drives value for cities, citizens, and businesses.”

Keshav Ranjan Prasad, Commissioner, Patna Municipal Corporation too emphasized, “A dedicated command and control centre of our cities will enable effective and real-time surveillance and also the monitoring of waste management which will make our people happy by solving their minor concerns and issues. We have kept 25 crores aside for creating public awareness which is very important for us.”

Ajay Girotra, Managing Director, AG Dauters Waste Processing Pvt Ltd. said, “Waste management is a very big problem in our cities today, for this, we have to change the mindsets. The Government needs to adapt to technology which is changing at a very fast pace. Solid and liquid waste is an energy source which can give us our basic things and protect the environment as well. A mindset of acceptability has to be inculcated amongst our citizens.”

Talking about the smartphones revolution that has changed the way people communicate, KK Singh, PGM, Enterprise Business, BSNL avowed, “Through the last decade, smartphones have a made a big space for themselves in the lives of people who cannot live without smartphones. The pace with which the technology is changing, the future will be revolutionary.”

But, what is a smart city and smart technology without a smart payment gateway to ensure robust services and is India prepared for this? Dwelling on the same, DB Mukhopadhyay, General Manager, Bank of Baroda said, “I will put it in a different way, with the help of technology today, the concept of banking has changed a great deal, now we talk in terms of financial management. If the payment and collection both are efficient, then the third aspect of liquidity management kicks in. All this has become possible due to technology. The host to host concept is important, so, there is no manual intervention, the person concerned only uses the technology and the system takes care of everything with the help of a server and we call it all the financial management.”


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smart cities smart cities conclave