Meet discusses solutions to urban problems

Urban planners, researchers, think tanks from the city and other parts of the country came together at the third edition of ‘Sustainable Smart Cities India’, a two-day conference organised by Nispana, a business solutions provider.

Retired IAS officer and chairman of Smart Cities India Foundation Dr A Ravindra, spoke about the need to provide capacity-building workshops to officers in urban agencies who are responsible for executing projects. Lack of project management skills results in loss of time and cost overrun, he said.

“Once infrastructure is created, the public needs to be educated on how to make use of the facilities efficiently,” said R K Misra, director of knowledge bank, Centre for Smart Cities. He explained that a solution which works for one city may not work for another because the local conditions are different. “Just because the BRTS (Bus Rapid Transport System) did not work in Delhi, you cannot say that it a bad solution. The culture, the people, the infrastructure in Delhi is different.” What did not work for Delhi may work for other cities, he said. 

Technology and good understanding of data can go a long way in making cities cleaner. Ravinder P Singh, who works with IoT and Smart Cities in Dell, gave the example of a project he worked with in Mohali, Punjab. They created a technology to track cleaning operations in the city using apps and GPS. The system gives live information through pictures and location-data to track which areas of the city require cleaning.

The conference had several other eminent speakers talking about all aspects of planning smart, sustainable cities, such as water management, waste management, transport systems and technology solutions.