Integrated City GIS to Facilitate Development, Collaboration and Decision-Making

Overview

Varanasi Smart City Limited (VSCL) guards the idea of rejuvenating the city of Varanasi into a great place to live and visit. It targets projects that uplift Varanasi’s denizens, upgrade city infrastructure and living standards, and add value to Varanasi’s core culture. A Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) mechanism designs and manages IT and non-IT projects under the Smart Cities Mission. The SPV’s objective is to fast-track projects that conserve the city’s enriched heritage, spirituality, and traditions while supporting inclusive social and financial solutions. To facilitate the achievement of the desired levels of development, the SPV decided to implement an enterprise-wide integrated City GIS.

Vision: To ensure efficient decision-making with respect to the city management.

The system enables the integration of the city’s locational data and IoT sensor data over GIS base maps, and provides real-time analytics, leading to better collaboration and more informed decision-making by the stakeholders.

Objectives

y Balance Varanasi’s cultural and spiritual heritage with better administration, operations, and holistic development. y Map overlapping development that has congested the city over several centuries. y Manage critical public service infrastructure, including assets related to water, sewage collection and treatment, street lighting, transportation, and parking services. y Retain and manage tourist footfall during smart project implementations. y Integrate Smart City projects with other ongoing development projects happening across the city.

Stakeholders Involved

Esri India and Varanasi Smart City Limited. Solution and Implementation Plan

In the process of creating an enterprise-wide integrated City GIS, multiple data sources and data levels were made available for analysis, including information on administrative boundaries, public services, religious places, education and health, tourism and recreation, transportation, water bodies, and locations of infrastructure related to water, sewerage, and drainage systems in the city.

The ArcGIS system, which forms the backbone of the City GIS, has become a digital mesh that has superimposed all smart components of the city over a common set of base maps.

The implementation plan involved the deployment of the following smart systems:

y Kashi Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC): It uses location-based technology to manage traffic safety and city security. The ICCC has also proved to be a versatile mechanism for rapid emergency response. The authorities converted the Centre into a COVID War Room to survey public places using

CCTV, map COVID-19 positive cases using GIS, and locate healthcare workers using GPS. y Kashi Solid Waste Management System: It optimizes waste pick-up facilities using smart sensors (Bin fill Sensors) on waste bins. The sensors populate the real-time fill status of the bins which helps in optimizing the waste Pickup and routing. There is also a ward-wise overview of the waste dumps on the

City GIS portal. This helps in coordinating waste management in the ward as well as waste processing plans. y Kashi Environmental Monitoring System: It maps real-time feed of weather, air pollution and noise pollution in different parts of the city. Air Quality Monitoring sensors provide valuable information that warns citizens of health-threatening conditions. The real-time data of sensors are published over the GIS portal with the criticality of the pollution using threshold values. It also allows authorities to attune traffic and industry with dynamic regulations that keep pollution under control. y Integration with Traffic Signals: In most Indian cities, malfunctioning signals invite traffic police to manage traffic, leading to the traffic snarl. In Varanasi, the Smart Traffic signals are integrated with GIS Maps for real-time visualization of the functioning of the Smart signals; this helps in identifying malfunctioning traffic signals on specific corridors and affected traffic flows. y Integration with Smart Streetlights: Real-time mapping of smart streetlights provides civic authorities with live updates on dysfunctional lighting. This promotes confidence among citizens by ensuring safer public places that deter crime.

Use of Geospatial Technologies

The enterprise-wide integrated City GIS is developed using Esri’s ArcGIS Enterprise with ArcGIS Hub and ArcGIS Desktops. GIS is at the core of all the above-mentioned smart systems that are integral parts of the City GIS.