Issues Plaguing Smart Cities: How IoT Can Help Turn These Into ‘Purely’ Smarter Ones

Issue#6 – E-Governance sucks

Main reasons for less than impressive implementation of e-governance aspects has been attributed (by experts) to poor security. However, Ajay feels that there is still time for this domain to oversee a rejuvenation.

Implementation/Deployment of secure Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructure consisting of wireless hotspots, fibre optics, and efficient Wi-Fi routers are aspects that can potentially mitigate connectivity issues plaguing e-governance in Indian smart cities.

Another aspect with respect to e-governance is complete digitisation of land records; this project though announced ambitiously by all governments has failed to take off as expected. Ajay opines that implementation of smart sensors will help in proper survey of land thereby leading to creation of a digital land inventory which makes it easy to store records related to a particular piece of land.

Finally, refine conventional approaches

Issues here refer to the overall governance, security, and the general maintenance of smart cities. Expert suggest that following a neat hierarchical design with clearly defined security threat classification is vital when it comes to secure networking.

For generalised security, there are solutions already available that can simply be tweaked to add the extra degree of smartness.

“After becoming used to the smart facilities, people will not tolerate breakdowns and might create chaos. Hence the preventive/predictive maintenance will be a crucial factor for smart cities”,

“The connected equipment with predictive indicators/ health check indicators will be mandatory in future, and this can be incorporated with IIoT solutions easily. This will give peace of mind to the users and consultants of smart cities.”, signs-off Shajee.

As per the anonymous IoT expert, micromanagement plays a key role in making smart cities truly smarter. Not every aspect of smart cities are Internet-driven. Educating citizens is the need of the hour.

“By following the above recommendations, compound solutions can be designed to solve issues that can resolve commercial as well as social parametric losses over the long-term and help build a truly digital nation.”, adds Ganesh.

“We need to move beyond smart cities that defined solely by economic or software parameters.”, signs-off Ajay.

Written by Rahul R, Senior Technical Journalist at EFY