Smart Cities 101: A beginners guide to Smart Cities
From the very launch of his election campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had spoken about building 100 smart cities in India for which the centre, in due course, sanctioned 40,000 crores (6307 million USD) to be used over the period of 5 years for the development of 100 smart cities. So what EXACTLY is a ‘Smart City’? A buzzword thrown around by politicians and bureaucrats for the sole purpose of hype generation or a legitimate solution for sustainable development and progress? A smart city, in a nutshell, is a collection of homes and buildings connected to the same information grid. A smart city uses digital technologies and information to enhance quality and performance of urban services, to reduce costs and resource consumption, and to engage more effectively and actively with its citizens. Sectors that have been developing smart city technology include government services, transport and traffic management, energy, healthcare, water and waste.
Why do we need smart cities anyway? With almost 7.3 billion individuals and a birth rate that seems to show no reduction, resource management becomes a concern especially now that 50% of the Earth’s population lives in urban areas. Resources are scarce and will only continue being consumed at an unsustainable space. We need to start putting the brakes on callous resource consumption and find efficient ways of making the best use of what we have as well as plan for the future. Most of the advancements in fields of technology end up going to our phones and flat screen TV’s with almost no cutting edge tech in disaster management, road safety, governance etc. Cities in this aspect lag behind.
In India the Urban Development Ministry identified five main elements that would qualify a city to be called ‘Smart’ o
In terms of infrastructure, the smart cities should have 24x7 availability of high quality utility services like water and electricity.
o
A robust transport system that emphasises on public transport and smart ways to navigate is also a key element.
o
In social infrastructure, the cities should provide opportunities for jobs and livelihoods for its inhabitants.
o
The smart cities should also have respectable facilities for entertainment and the safety and security of the people. State-of-the-art health and education facilities are also obligatory.
o
The smart cities should reduce waste by increasing energy efficiency, recycling and applying water conservation techniques.
A key factor in the development of modern smart cities is an integrated, digital infrastructure. Software is an integral part of almost every service/product these days. Across the world, comprehensive infrastructure solutions are already helping city planning, contributing to cities that are more sustainable, resilient and accessible. Integrated systems and automated technologies such as smart grids, intelligent buildings, and mobility solutions are being developed to keep people on the move help to create a smart infrastructure built to last the tides of time. Development of better technology solutions helps create metropolitan areas worth living in places where people can enjoy a high quality of life. Mobility is one of the greatest challenges of smart cities. The demand for smart mobility is growing all over the world. Transporting people and goods to all corners of the earth presents challenges for the infrastructure of national economies. This applies, in particular, to the transport and logistics facilities of cities: Can the outdated address system be unified to make sense across? Can advanced navigation services help avoid total gridlock? Will cities be able to solve the problems caused by increasing road traffic? How can logistics supply chains be further optimized as freight volumes continue to increase steadily? Zippr provides answers to all of these questions with its smart address solution, solves the problem of explaining and seeking addresses by creating a new simple standard for individuals and businesses. Zippr has the know-how to make navigation and address management better i.e making it easier to find locations, make road traffic flow more smoothly and quickly, making automobiles potentially spew lesser exhaust gases promoting environmentally friendly and efficient transport. All this is possible through the revolutionary, unique way by which Zippr is changing how we look at addresses. When a Zippr is created, which is an 8 character alphanumeric code, it grabs all the relevant information relating to its location (lat-long, street address) via GPS and merges it with the code. So when accessed, that code reveals the exact address on a map which is then accessible via sat-nav. This helps reduce the time one takes to get to a location as the entire route is displayed digitally reducing the need for one to indulge in low-value talks. Zippr is currently working on government integration, enabling various administrations to better help their citizens with water, electricity, waste management and complaint reconciliation by helping them with increased overall transparency via GIS rich maps enabling them to make superior and effective actionable decisions. Zippr is also concurrently aiding QSRs, Courier and eCommerce enterprises reach their customers and vice versa in an efficient and effective demeanour. For more updates please visit http://zippr.in