With more than 70% of world’s population expected to be living in urban centres in the next 15 – 20 years, urban ecosystem, comprising three elements – the natural resources element, the built environment and the socio-economic environment would be under huge stress to be flexible, to adapt quickly and seamlessly to the demands of the ever growing population.
Multidisciplinary and multidimensional in nature, urban ecosystem management requires a composite of social, environmental, and economic decision-making tools and solutions that can register and process huge quantum of data in real time to manage urban assets and resources effectively.
The concept of SMART CITY 1.0 was thus developed. SMART CITY 1.0 concept encourages collection of data and interconnection of individual systems like public transport, energy, waste management, mobility etc. It aims at the alignment of demands vs supply of urban centres where resources, processes and products are used more effectively and optimally while requiring less inputs, creating less waste and generating by-products as resources.
However, in the recent past, we see the dawn of next generation aspirations for smart centres, not necessarily urban centres. It has become abundantly clear now that the objective of any SMART city or township revolves around the following.
“Quality of life and Well Being”
We, at Green Quest, believe that the phrase above summarizes what SMART CITY solutions aspires for. Any SMART city framework or solution needs to have a clear central objective - To ensure Quality of life and Well Being of its core stakeholder - The CITIZENs.
“Well Being” encapsulates the influencing factors of Physical, Emotional, Intellectual and Social interactions/ experiences at the places we live, work and play.
“Quality of life” is the sum-total manifestation of each attribute in the “Well Being” arena that we experience and enjoy over a period of time. It also measures how we choose to sustain the same or even better those standards which, then gets passed on, to next generations.
Another aspect which needs to be an integral part of any successful SMART city framework is the nuance of sustainability. Sustainable smart city solutions are the need of the future having the following three elements:
- a) Robust e-Enabled cognitive infrastructure
- b) Techno – Human - Socio collaboration
- c) Sustainable value generation linked to economic activity
Just having a well connected and integrated system will not suffice anymore. The solutions needs to be built around ‘smart real time decisioning’ infrastructure that accurately predicts, adapts and outputs actionable sustainable solutions.
While achievability is key to any successful smart solution, awareness and acceptability of the solution by the core stakeholders is equally, if not more, important. Social acceptance of the solution in any form leads to successful implementation and also enrichment of the experience based on active socio-human collaboration and feedback mechanism.
Last but not the least, unless the idea or innovation leads to sustainable economic value generation or sustainable changes, we don’t see the idea being SMART or innovative. Such ideas fail to impress stakeholders and become irrelevant very early in their lifecycle.