Smart digital tech solutions set to make cities liveable

Vinod Behl

Smart and efficient technologies will be playing a bigger role in making cities liveable, by improving key quality-of-life indicators.

And it’s not just about installing digital interfaces in traditional infrastructure or streamlining city operations, but also about using technology and data purposefully to have better decision making and deliver a better quality of life.

Smart cities add digital intelligence to urban development and use it to solve public problems and achieve a higher quality of life. A recent study by McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) reveals that smart technologies to improve urban quality of life, remain unrealised. It establishes that three layers of smartness elevate life in futuristic cities.

These include a tech base, comprising networks of connected devices and sponsors smart application and data analysis capability and adoption and usage, leading to better decision making.

MGI has assessed that smart solutions can improve multiple aspects of urban quality of life — cost of living, safety, health, environment, connectedness and employment. Smart city technologies help cities to get more out of their assets by adding new capabilities through upgradation of core components. In today’s world, many of the cities, including the most dynamic ones, face serious housing shortages, driving up rentals and home prices. These shortages are mainly attributed to bureaucratic bottlenecks related to land acquisition, construction permits and environment clearances etc. Digitizing these processes considerably removes risks and delays, in turn speeding up the construction. The boost supply achieved with this will bring down the prices.

As cities increasingly face mobility-related problems, smart mobility applications have variable potential to make commuting faster and easier, depending upon each city’s density, existing transit infrastructure and community pattern. Intelligent syncing of traffic signals and real time navigation and smart parking apps reduce congestion on city roads. With digital solutions, cities can also deliver a cleaner and more sustainable environment as building automation systems, dynamic electricity pricing and mobility applications, help cut emissions. Air quality sensors help identify the sources of pollution and provide the basis for further action.  By closely tracking the sources of pollution, traffic and construction can be regulated accordingly. Sharing real time air quality information with public through smart phone apps enables people to take protective measures, thereby reducing negative health effects.

Further, digital tracking also helps to reduce the volume of per capita solid waste disposal, thereby improving sanitation and checking pollution. Cities in developing world are facing acute drinking water shortage. This can be effectively tackled by controlling water wastage through leakage by deploying sensors and analytics while water consumption tracking helps conserve water.

Digitizing government functions such as business licensing, permits and tax filing, can help free local bodies from red- tape, contributing to more entrepreneurial business climate. Smart technologies also have a net positive impact on formal employment through E-career centres and through data-driven formal education and online retraining programmes enhancing city's pool of skills.

Digital channels for communication can enhance connectedness among residents and between residents and authorities, thereby promoting participatory governance. MGI study report has established that young population of a city is more aware and involved in adopting smart technologies as they are more digitally inclined. As such those city agencies which maintain an active presence on social media or develop their own interactive citizen apps, they in addition to disseminating information, help residents to report concerns, collect data or weigh in on planning issues to make city truly smart and liveable.

The writer is founder, Ground Real(i)ty Media