The initiatives for Smart City Belagavi, India has started off in the right earnest and I was involved in submitting my wish list to the City Corporation recently.
The need for a new agenda: Belgaum-Belagavi-Belgaon is nicely poised to take on the mantle of a smart city, it has the right mix of ingredients for a modern city in the making; namely cosmopolitan population, a rich sense of history, a melting pot of cultures, salubrious climate, and strategic location (mid way between the financial & technology capitals of India i.e, Mumbai and Bengaluru). What is more important is its size (about 5.5 Lacs), which I believe is just about right for testing new ideas, implementing smart city technologies and developing an eco-system to sustain it without much hassles. What is particularly important from a political point of view is that the 'Smart City Belagavi' initiative will have a positive impact in driving social cohesion (i.e, bring together disparate groups with political agendas based on linguistic or regional identities) and drive economic growth and prosperity which has suffered as a result of this turmoil.
We have to look at various solutions to put the city on the smart city India map ranging from the high tech to the simple, and from the game changing to the essential, identifying what works and what is most suited for the indian eco-system. Smart City Belagavi initiative will have to rely on drawing up a road map and plan with digital technologies at its core. This means that the agenda involves relying on inexpensive storage, computing, bandwidth and sensors which is collectively called as ‘the internet of things (IOT)’. IOT will help generate large amounts of data that can be used to plan civic resources, save energy, improve efficiency of the civic bodies and help deliver better services to its citizens. That is essentially to my mind, the agenda for the Smart City belagavi project.
I have compiled a list of top 10 issues that the city administrators have to keep in mind while working towards this. Essentially it revolves around two themes
- As a smart city, Belagavi city (BCC in particular) will optimize its resources use, reducing the carbon footprint to the minimum by improving its efficiency.
- Belagavi as a Smart City will involve its people, apart from civic administrators and other stakeholders like Pvt Institutions, Govt etc in the planning and implementation process
Click here for the final report of the Smart City Proposal (SCP) made by the Belagavi City Corporation that catapulted it to the 15th position in the first list of 20 Smart Cities announced by the Modi Govt.
My other article on Belagavi cuisine, this to-be-Smart City also has great food joints too!!
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