Summit – Smart Cities

3rd National Summit on 100 Smart Cities India 2017

As the population of the country increases, the need of the hour is to move toward smarter use of available resources. Indian government’s USD 7.3 billion Smart Cities mission is aimed at applying smart solutions to improve infrastructure and service delivery in our cities. Developing world class smart cities that meet the objectives of sustainability and improvement in the quality of life is a challenging task.

Acknowledging the great importance of the Smart Cities initiative by the Indian government, Bharat Exhibitions organized the third edition of their industry flagship event National Summit on 100 Smart Cities India 2017, which was held on August 18, 2017, New Delhi. The discussions at the summit revolved around the roadmap for innovations, sustainability, surveillance, and development for smart cities.

According to the industry estimates, by 2050, about 70 percent of the Indian population will be living in cities. The smart city programs that are currently under various stages of development and implementation have to keep this shift into account and to ensure that they are able to provide optimal living conditions and at the same time be beneficial to everyone in the society. In effect, the components of a smart city would include enabling a better life, with services, mobility, environment, e-governance, economy, and sustainability.

“The Indian government’s vision to create 100 new smart cities to support the rapid urbanization is an important step, as it seeks to provide residents with an efficient and reliable infrastructure, enhanced quality of life and economic opportunities. It is an established fact that without ICT one cannot have a good smart city but there are various other elements too that we need to pay a close attention.” said Shashi Dharan, managing director,  Bharat Exhibitions.

“The 100 Smart Cities is no magic wand to address all the problems that we have, but a small attempt to address the rapid urbanization that we are witnessing. The success or failure of this lies in our own hands as the citizens are the most important part of the smart city ecosystem,” said Amit Singh, director – smart cities, PwC.

“The times are now changing and we cannot go ahead and serve to the demands of people as and when it comes. We need them to have an active participation in the smart city process,” said Arun Kumar Mishra, director, National Smart Grid Mission.

Dinesh Chand Sharma, director – standard and public policy, EU project, Seconded European Standardization Expert in India (SESEI) said, “We need to implement technologies that are future proof. There is a set standard that defines Smart City but there is a need to have a standard ICT architecture and for surveillance that can be used to plug and play applications.”

The 100 Smart Cities India 2017 featured the designated heads of municipalities, urban/city planning, research/academic institutes, engineers/consultants, energy and utility experts, mobility and transportation experts, technology providers, and many more. The end objective behind bringing all these experts under one roof was to facilitate brainstorming on the opportunities, challenges and scope for developing a truly smart city infrastructure, encompassing the current situations pertaining to policy guidelines, regulatory norms, implementation challenges, etc., highlighting the importance of integrating ICT to support the Smart Cities mission in India.

Making it truly global platform to conduct business, global players such as Mahindra World City, CSG International, Netmagic, Amdocs Optima, Qognify, Cambium Networks, Sensorise, Infineon, Spirent, Vertiv, SUSE, Shaildhar & Smart Cities Council India, are participated at the event. The event was endorsed and supported by COAI, ETSI, ISGF, TSDI, CENELEC, and CEN.

The event provided the stakeholders a timely opportunity to discuss the key trends, issues, and challenges in smart city development, its market drivers and the outlook for India. Issues such as managing energy crisis, climate changes and disaster risks, challenges in deployment of intelligent transport solutions, and the role of cloud computing in a smarter city were also discussed.