Acceleration of urban growth is causing many challenges and rendering cities unliveable. Statistics show that more than 50 per cent of the world population will move to cities by 2050. All this leads to greater emphasis on smart, sustainable cities, writes Dasari Anvesh, Project Manager (R&D), Efftronics System Private Limited
What smart cities are like? Well, that can be best summed up in the lines of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s poem, “Where the mind is without fear”. A smart city should be safe, secure, healthy, pleasant, efficient, learnable, affordable, sustainable and dynamic, so as to ensure a comfortable and peaceful life for the citizens.
Various sensors like temperature, humidity, rainfall, traffic, lighting, power consumption, water distribution, etc., can generate lots of useful data about the cities. In olden days, all this data was captured in silos, but now using Internet of Things (IoT) framework, we can bring all this data to a common platform. Using Big Data and Analytics multidimensional analysis can be carried to give better insights. These bring better living, resource conservation, economic development, new business models and better citizen services.
Efftronics Systems Private Limited, a product development company, has developed various nuts and bolts of IoT. In its 30 years of journey, various case studies have been implemented to provide better citizen services.
Water Distribution
The major problems relating to water distribution are bad quality, limited supply, uneven distribution and wastage. Various sensors are used to capture parameters like flow, level and chlorine content at various stages of water distribution. This data is being pushed on to the cloud. Using analytics, we can identify various problems in water distribution system. This data can be shared with various stakeholders like citizens, government officials and leaders using mobility. In a project executed in Vijayawada municipality, the water wastage had been reduced from thirty per cent to nine per cent.
Efftronics Systems Private Limited, a product development company, has developed various nuts and bolts of IoT. In its 30 years of journey, various case studies have been implemented to provide better citizen services
Road Transportation
Road transportation in cities is very chaotic and unsafe, leading to a sudden spurt in the number of accidents. To improve this system, an Intelligent Traffic System is envisaged for the smart cities.
Using cameras, signal timings can be adjusted to better handle the current traffic densities. Various violations can be identified like red light jumping, speed violation, driving in the wrong lane, etc.
Using the same cameras, when a car number is entered, the software can search through all these cameras and provide the route in which the vehicle has traversed. These cameras can also calculate current traffic info at various junctions. The software can disseminate this data through variable message signboards, mobile apps, etc. Every user can be informed about the traffic and he can plan alternative routes for efficient traveling.
Railways
Efftronics products like Data Loggers developed for railways have brought in cultural change in the operations and maintenance of signaling system there. This product has become a black box for railways. Within minutes of a serious accident, involving signaling system,Efftronics products like Data Loggers developed for railways have brought in cultural change in the operations and maintenance of signaling system there. This product has become a black box for railways. Within minutes of a serious accident, involving signaling system, reason could be found out with evidence. Accident enquiries, which used to take weeks, could be completed now in few hours with the help of this product. Wrong operations by the Station Master and shortcuts by signal maintainers are reduced drastically by daily monitoring through Data Logger System. This system has been installed in more than 6,000 stations in the Indian Railways through the length and breadth of the country.
Environment
Environment is getting affected due to urbanisation and cities are getting increasingly polluted. Recent Chennai floods have clearly shown the catastrophic impacts of urbanisation. Smart environment can monitor various weather, pollution parameters in the cities. It can provide various alerts about the pollution. It can also predict the flooding effects based on rainfall and the GIS information of the drainage systems. These can give early warnings to the various stakeholders. These are only some of the smart solutions that Efftronics offers. Similarly, various other solutions like Smart Street Lighting, Smart Parking, Smart Buildings, Smart Utilities, etc., will make cities more efficient and liveable.