Soumya Das, Director, Rudrabhishek Infosystem, talks to KTP Radhika on technology adoption in urban planning and development, discusses how GIS adoption is going to revolutionize the sector along with new opportunities. Excerpts…
What are the technological glitches in smart city projects today? How will analytics help to address those issues?
The smart city projects require a comprehensive solution. However in the existing system of project implementation there are different companies, departments dealing in various areas resulting in a less optimization of resources. It is necessary to obtain cooperation among several companies focusing on a single overall concept and to develop a project that combines the necessary technology elements to achieve an overall optimization that satisfies the diverse needs of the government, business and citizens.
To achieve this, there must be someone providing a total solution, possessing the strong leadership to exercise total, one – stop management of the entire project, to completely clear all of the issues. For this data has to be brought on the same platform and can also be interpolated against one anotherr. Analytics solutions have a lot of scope in this area.
What is the scenario of technology adoption in urban planning in India?
Our country is rapidly being urbanized and huge areas are being covered by cities. The populations of established areas of the cities are constantly growing with new buildings, and structures are being added. Planning and managing cities in the new era of globalisation and economic liberalisation is a demanding task that needs new skills and approach. Manual survey to prepare the existing land-use map has been the traditional way. This very first step in formulating the plan takes considerable time and efforts, particularly, for metropolitan cities and large towns.
Indian cities are competing with others to attract investments and therefore, issues like quality of infrastructure, energy efficient services provision and environmental conditions in a city besides economic viability plays a significant role in such competition. The urban planning authorities and agencies in the country are adopting Geographic Information System (GIS) technology in all the field of infrastructure, energy and environment. Today’s affordable computers and application software for handling and supporting geographic information such as GIS have the potential to allow planners to keep pace with development.
How is GIS enabled data management system going to revolutionize urban planning and development?
Urban planning and development is a continuous process and involves planners, administrators, developers, investors and of course, the residents. Their perceptions, expectations and actions for complex analysis are not possible by moving with the same conventional techniques.
With the advent of GIS technology, capturing the spatial details by remote sensing and organizing that data together with corresponding attributed data offers tremendous ease in undertaking some of the urban planning activities. GIS can also improve fundamental understanding of the changes in urban area and the complex interactions between them. The advantage of GIS technology lies in its data synthesis, the geography simulation and spatial analysis ability. In urban planning, GIS gives appropriate methods to locate all buildings, plots, facilities and infrastructure in a town or municipality. Moreover, it provides planners, surveyors and engineers with the tools they need to design and map their neighborhoods and cities.
It enables easy access to data, create automated processes for spatial analysis and improve business processes, centralized data management and control, real time data updation of raw land and finished product. It also helps in online report generation and provides immediate accessibility to latest updated data of the concerned departments.
What kind of growth opportunities do you find for GIS in India?
In a vast country like India, with much demographic diversity, GIS promises immense opportunity. The largest consumer of these applications is the Indian government. Various state governments have numerous e-governance initiatives where they can utilize GIS applications. The benefits of GIS applications in planning, research and development and deployment are changing the way business decisions are taken.
