B’luru among six global cities selected for smart city project

San Jose: Bengaluru is joining Barcelona, Chicago, Hamburg, Nice and Songdo in a technological leap.
These six global cities have been chosen by Cisco Systems for digitization and smart connected communities, the company’s chairman and CEO John Chambers announced at a global editors conference in San Jose, US, last week.
Cisco has collaborated with the Electronics City Industries Association (ELCIA) to develop Asia’s first end-to-end (Internet of Things-IoT) Innovation Hub in Bengaluru.
At the Living Lab, spread over 5 km in E-City, south Bengaluru, electronic and system design manufacturing start-ups and other electronic city companies will build solutions for City Infrastructure Management (CIM) including smart parking, smart CCTV surveillance, smart street lighting, smart water management/leak detection and community messaging.
Globally, cities and citizens have benefitted immensely from digitization. Smart lighting has reduced crime by 7% in the UK. While waste collection costs have plunged 30% using sensors in the US, in Barcelona, sensors link cars with transportation management centers that analyze day-to-day traffic flow data and provide what-if scenarios in case of events or accidents.
The Bengaluru project utilizes the Cisco Smart+Connected City WiFi solution that enables community Wi-Fi services and allows access to public utility offerings. The E-City has over 185 companies spread over 750 acres. The remote FIR registration kiosk launched last month as a pilot by the Bengaluru police along with Cisco is an example of the power of public-private partnerships.
“Private and public sector organisations are facing intense pressure to innovate faster. Look at the way Uber is changing the road industry or what Facebook and Google are doing to ad industry. It’s about connecting your car and coffee shop. Whether it is parking or security or mobility, the next transition is everything us. India has a huge potential in having to gain the most from the Internet of everything (IOE),” Chambers said.
Anil Menon, Cisco deputy chief globalisation officer and president of Smart+Connected Communities, said, “The foundation for Bengaluru as a smart city will be intelligent networks which will transform the delivery of citizen services from transportation, utilities and security to entertainment, education, and healthcare. We believe the industry and the government can work towards a common vision of making Bengaluru a smart city where technology and apps will transform the delivery of citizen services and improve the citizens’ quality of life.”
And it is no more about just doing the job, but doing it more efficiently by leveraging technology. “There is huge potential for governments and city administrators. The transformation to smart cities is underway and is no longer a question of if, it is a matter of when,” Chris White, senior vice-president- IoE/IoT Solutions, Cisco, told TOI.
Eventually, the aim is to improve the quality of citizens’ lives by leveraging technology – whether it is finding a parking spot on Bengaluru’s roads or disposing of garbage.
(This correspondent was in San Jose, US, to attend the Global Editors Conference on invitation from Cisco)