Smart City
is one of the hottest buzzwords, especially in India today. There are plenty of
meanings floating, right from various levels of government, real-estate
builders, IT companies and general people. A smart city is a digitally connected
city, offering critical services to its people ensuring a sustainable economy
and smarter, leaner governance.
A major
interest is driven from the government side. The governments want to provide
sustainable and growth oriented economic environment in their respective
region, by provisioning top class infrastructure. A smart city brings
operational efficiency and centralized control for the government as well as
local authorities. It provisions real-time information combining intelligence,
augments new services to its citizens, maintains order by proactively and
reactively safeguarding public and is capable of improving its quality and
scale over time. Needy infrastructure services for citizens such as safety,
utility, health, emergency, traffic, communication are controlled, actioned and
brained by IT, the underlying foundation for smart city. Such projects are a
need of the hour for India, as this uplifts our domestic economy, cuts
redundant government spending, drives efficiency in all infrastructure sectors
and make citizens more productive and prosperous.
From the
real-estate point of view, for large builders constructing townships,
societies, commercial or education campuses, the smart-city equals better
living, vigilance, new service amenities and residents collaboration through
centralized monitoring and management.
A smart
city is therefore a combination of “Monitoring,
Action and Intelligence” that constantly influences the quality of services
to the citizen. The underlying physical infrastructure that provides critical
services is digitized by the layer of IT infrastructure.
A smart
city is fully connected by primarily fiber or wireless technology. The
information collection happens centrally at a data center and is primarily
managed, viewed at a centralized command center. It is also an aggregation of multiple
systems that exchange data among themselves.
The key IT driving forces of “Social Media”, “Mobility”, “Cloud” and
“Analytics” along with Internet of Things and Information Security have direct
role in implementing a smart city. Thus system integrators, who have very
strong IT infrastructure experience as well as sensor based technology
expertise are the right companies for the Smart City.
Allied,
being a strong infrastructure services and solutions provider over 30 years and
a master systems integrator undoubtedly possesses the right experience, skills
and project implementation agility to be best positioned to implement smart
city projects. It has been therefore awarded the first such project of a smart
city initiative, the city of Pune by implementing critical services of citizen
safety and traffic management. This project is now operational and providing
great value for improving law and order of the city.