Smart Cities

Making Smart Cities or People Smarter: The X Factor

There has been little pondering over the inclusiveness of different sections of society in a ‘Smart City’. Therefore, it is imperative that Smart Cities should not lead to withering of a common sense of belonging to the nation by creating isolated island of disintegrated cities. Rather, let ‘Smart Nation’ be a futuristic goal of this novel endeavour.

While the India’s ‘100 Smart Cities’ initiative would surely intensify the process of urbanization with half of the country’s population living in urban areas. In such a scenario, while ‘smart city’ solutions would be inevitable, we must not lose sight of the future of the rural population who need greater attention. The urban magnet should not leave the rural workforce to fend for themselves.

Learning From Others

Let’s not reinvent the wheel. It would be worthwhile to learn from countries like Singapore, UK and U.S. the implementation of best practices. In London, for example, there are over 17,000 cameras installed after the 2005 bombing. It is one of the densest cities in terms of security.

In India too, we need greater public-private partnership to ensure this kind of implementation of smart infrastructure. It is all about the collaboration between government infrastructure and smart people at all levels. The time has come for practices like preventive policing and predictive analytics to be implemented. This involves public-private partnerships to work in four areas namely city surveillance, building security, architecture and physical security in public spaces to ensure safety.

In India’s context, ‘Smart Policing’ may require not only comprehensive modernisation of the structure and operation of police forces, but also the need for a more flexible legal framework. Traditional laws will need to be replaced by modern police laws that will recognize newer crimes and ensure appropriate focus on crimes related to cyber security like information and identity thefts, breach of data privacy and, hacking of websites and networks.

The components, systems, networks and architecture are important to the security design and reliability of the ‘Smart City’ communications solutions. But it is impossible to predict and prevent undesirable emergencies and one must be prepared with a proper response plan. Since the rapidity of the response is critical during emergency situations, it is imperative to ensure that a ‘Smart City’ is insulated as much as possible from the impact of unpredictable disasters.

 

The X Factors

Peace and harmony are essential X factors for sustaining the country’s economic growth. But security threats loom large and unless these are addressed in right earnest if there is a serious threat of derailing the growth engine. There are various kinds of security threats in Smart Cities, particularly cyber-attacks can bring the entire city structure to a standstill. One of the biggest concerns about smart cities is that the sensors in the equipment can be hacked and fed fake data, which could be used for all manner of mischief, like causing signal failures that shut down subways or allowing contaminants into the water supply, etc.

In addition to new security concerns in Smart Cities, the traditional risks like that of assassinations, kidnappings, hijacking, bomb scares, etc. cannot be ruled out completely. Some of these have been potent threats to internal security in view of the deadly nature of terrorist attacks these days and that terrorist organisations are increasing resorting to use of new technologies to instil fear into the common citizen.

Urban Terrorism Vs Security

Urban terrorism seems to be the new modus operandi. There is therefore a need to look into urban security and particularly security of smart cities from a completely new perspective. Besides terrorism, India currently is facing internal security threats such as naxalism, religious fundamentalism, manmade disasters, insurgencies etc.

The new breed of threat creators have trans-border linkages, are tech savvy, use modern gadgets, are well planned and coordinated. In order to combat this new face of terrorism, there is a need to upgrade to modern & hi-tech equipment for better internal security. Technology has an important role to play in this, be it the application and tools for intelligence gathering, surveillance, detection or protection.

In the enthusiasm to create 100 smart cities, we shouldn’t create a society where battles are fought between the haves and the have-nots. We should be cautious so that ‘Smart Cities’ shouldn’t lead to creation of class divisions between perceived smart citizens and other citizens debarred from availing of the facilities and opportunities of a ‘Smart City’.

AsiaBizToday