PropTech for Smart Cities
Nearly 31 per cent of India’s current population lives in urban areas and contributes 63 per cent of India’s GDP. With increasing urbanization and high GDP growth, expectations are that another 15-25 per cent (200- 350 Million people) of the rural population will migrate to urban areas by 2030. This along with China’s urbanization is the single largest contemporaneous mass migration in Human history. As is obvious, such a migration cannot be managed without creating significant urban infrastructure support. Keeping this in mind the Government has initiated an ambitious Smart Cities Mission. The Mission is intended to cover 100 cities.
Technology has to be a key ingredient of any such ambitious mission. The advances in Blockchain, Cloud Infrastructure, Geo-location services, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) can provide fertile building blocks for the smart cities of future. Below we will cover some of these technologies that can help significantly expedite and enhance the Smart City Mission. Each of these technologies can warrant a detailed analysis.
Blockchain can create an information chain that is immutable and indestructible. This can help smart cities in fully digitizing land records and capturing transactional data that is sacrosanct.
IoT enabled transportation systems, effective use of data from different sources and processing information in real time to take immediate action can improve traffic flows, effectuate electronic road pricing based on congestion and have a centralized monitoring and command and control system for traffic management. Some of this is already under implementation in cities like London and Singapore.
IoE (Internet of Everything) in Health Care, adoption of technology enabled solutions complimented with an array of healthcare management services, will help the healthcare industry in India leapfrog into ‘information age healthcare’. Analysis of digitized patient data can significantly enhance healthcare delivery in Smart Cities. Networking & Communication critical to many of the technology trends related to smart cities is the underlying communications infrastructure that enables smart cities to connect infrastructure, devices and people and gather the data and deliver services to myriad endpoints.
Big Data & Data Analytics- The evolving technology that captures, manages and analyses this big data and leverages technologies such as cloud computing. Cities are now able to access and use massive computing resources that were too expensive to own and manage only a few years ago. This is being used in traffic control, garbage collection, resource planning and allocation and for citizen engagement.
Combination of Cameras, Drones and Big Data analytics
Can be used in crime prevention and crime control through predictive policing across major cities. A number of police departments are already using these tools. It is fair to assume that these technologies are economic game changers for Governments, City Planners and City Administrators. They will transform and make more efficient how we build, manage and operate our cities in the future.
