Thiruvananthapuram: The three-day APAC Smart & Sustainable City Conclave organized in association with Smart City Thiruvananthapuram Ltd (SCTL) and the Government of Kerala concluded on Thursday. As many as 2,000 delegates, comprising decision makers and stake holders of 20 State Governments, Government of India, Smart City Mission CEOs and representatives from foreign embassies joined.
While the first two days of the conclave was dedicated to smart water ways, e-mobility, smart and green transport, emerging technologies in e-governance in urban space, solid and water waste management, smart and renewable energy and tourism, the concluding witnessed discussions and deliberations on technology led effective public healthcare delivery system for future cities.
Speaking on effective healthcare delivery, Dr Divya S Iyer, Mission Director, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Scheme & Managing Director, National AYUSH Mission State, Government of Kerala, said, “For a sustainable smart city, it is inevitable that there is a healthy population. There is a need to identify what lies beneath the surface. A robust screening and surveillance system would go a long way.”
Dr Divya insisted that a model of convergence was essential. Healthcare cannot be delivered in a silo. A model of convergence where the education department, women and gender department, local self-government bodies work in coordination.”
In what can be termed as an innovation that is here to stay, a presentation by Milind Padole, MD, APARL caught eyeballs. The offerings included vertical multi-level car parking with provision for 300 cars facility in just 500 sft area. He added, “Robotics too is an area that the company invested in since 2005 and now the robots developed can speak in 14 Indian languages.”
One has been hearing a lot about Bhopal Smart City of late. Yogesh Khakre, CS, Bhopal Smart City Development Corporation Ltd shared the initiatives pertaining to ICCC and how Rs 1,000 crore was saved by going in for a common ICCC and bringing it onto the cloud.” He also explained the success of traffic management system and the corporation could garner Rs 10 crore challans.”
The session on citizens engagement initiatives witnessed a good interaction between Nitin Sangwan, IAS, CEO, Ahmedabad Smart City Limited, Dr Apurva Sharma, IAS, CEO, Silvassa Smart City Limited and Raj Cherubal, CEO, Chennai Smart City Limited, Govt of Tamil Nadu. All panelists agreed that citizen participation was crucial for the successful implementation of a smart city. If Ahmedabad created 10 citizen centric applications, Silvassa engaged citizens in almost all projects including the development and redesign of a vegetable market.
Raj Cherubal exhorted managers to have a GIS backed system and emphasized the need for reducing the communication gap. Data and its usage and integrating data from different formats for a robust delivery of citizen services, he said was the challenge.
Karnataka has been in the forefront of urban development with Bengaluru having several firsts, N Srinivas, Executive Director, KUIDFC explained the several initiatives that Karnataka State was taking and how the seven cities being developed are going to have 230 smart roads in which 50% of the roads would have provision for cycling.
The introduction of electric buses in Bengaluru, e-rickshaws in Shimoga and Tumkur and developing Hubli and Dharwad would take the state onto the next level. The third day ended with the Neetu Kumari Prasad, Member Secretary, Telangana State Pollution Control Board, Govt of Telangana giving a call for earmarking funs by smart cities for setting up STPs, transfer stations for segregation of waste to go for waste to energy.”
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