While the country has set an ambitious goal of developing smart cities, the 440 acre mini-township inside the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) campus is being turned into a “living laboratory” to implement the smart city concept.
The first part of the project, which will cost Rs 93 lakh, is being jointly funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, and the Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber Physical Systems (RBCCPS) at IISc.
Intelligent water management for a sustainable campus environment is the current focus of the project, which will be extended to other domains like energy and environment. The outcome of the project, according to IISc, will lead to lower energy use through optimal pump operations, improve water quality through online prediction and detection, and reduce the water usage. The project will also bring visibility to campus members of their water usage and the quality.
This inter-disciplinary team has faculty from multiple departments – computational and data sciences, electrical and communication engineering, RBCCPS and civil engineering.
Principal investigator of the smart campus project, Dr Yogesh Simmhan mentioned that since India is giving a big push for developing 100 smart cities, they have decided to focus on this aspect.
IISc has a 400-plus acre campus, a floating population of over 10,000 students and faculty and non-faculty members, several laboratories and residential apartments. So it is a mini township and therefore has been treated as a living laboratory to understand how the campus itself can be a smarter campus by validating some of the research the institute is doing.
By EB Bureau
