Shortly after Bengaluru made its last pitch at making it to the “smart city” list, a workshop organised by the Smart Cities India Foundation in Karnataka on Wednesday, made a bid at roping in startups in the process of strengthening digital and telecommunications in the city, as well as batting for adoption of Internet of Things (IOT) in civic governance.
Bengaluru has failed to make it to the smart city list of the Centre earlier and recently submitted its proposal to vie for the last 19 spots left.
Gaurav Gupta, Principal Secretary, Depaartment of IT/BT notified that the field of IoT is very large and complex and it involves inputs and data collection from various departments of the government and thereby their main motive will be to tackle these challenges and come up with novel solutions.
Kiran Kuchi from the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, said the vast use of IoT allows water and electricity to be monitored in the smart way by establishing a communication module between the meter and the utility, which should ideally cost 10 percent of the overall charge in fixing the meters and such technology was readily available. Offering an example, he spoke about the smart water monitoring in Spain where narrowband IoT technology was used to study water leakage and succeeding to a large extent.
For Bengaluru, the example cited was a pilot project started off in Electronics City recently where “smart street lamps” were installed with sensors which can reduce or increase the intensity of light depending on the density of the crowd on the road.
By Baishakhi Dutta
