How ‘Smart’ is the Smart City Mission?
With each passing year, we are seeing different shades of technology. First it started with smart phone, then smart television and now our government is full-fledged dedicated to make smart cities in India. There are numerous varieties and developments, which we have seen from last few years, means the day is not away where our country will be considered as the smartest country in the world. According to a news website, Bharatpur will be the next Smart City in the coming years as they plan to include the city under the Modi government’s Smart City Mission. Smart city technology allows city officials to interact directly with both community and city infrastructure and to monitor what is happening in the city and how the city is evolving. Manoranjan Mohapatra, Co-Founder, Phoenix Robotix and Avinash J Trivedi, VP – Business Development, Videonetics Technology during an interaction with Nitisha shares the growth plans and loopholes of the industry.
Smart City’s Demand
Smart city projects are growing in popularity across the globe with an increasing urban population and rapid expansion of areas. Stakeholders are looking at smarter ways to manage complexities, increase efficiencies and improve quality of life. This has created need for cities that monitor and integrate infrastructure to better optimize resources while maximizing services to its citizens, said Trivedi While sharing his point of view about smart cities.
Videonetics is playing a pivotal role by providing its Unified Video Computing Platform™, especially developed to address typical challenges with regards to large scale surveillance, traffic management, video forensics etc. We have successfully achieved market leadership position in Safe & Smart City Market in India by successfully securing 140 cities in India. The modular architecture of our UVCP™ makes it efficient to integrate various applications using pluggable modules and customize the solution to meet unique needs of many industries ranging from small shops, to universities, stadiums and cities, said Trivedi.
Whereas, Mohapatra says, Phoenix Robotix works in more than 15 cities in India with large integrators like Honeywell, L&T, Acetech, etc. Our USP is end to end affordable IoT solutions and it’s different in the sense of customization.
Impact of Covid19
All industries in this world have suffered a lot due to corona pandemic. Many companies have stopped the work and few are working in a big loss. So, while emphasizing on same, Trivedi says the impact of COVID-19 on enterprises and economies is transforming the way businesses are operated and delivered worldwide. As various verticals implement new protocols in response to COVID-19, we recently launched world’s first video analytics based Pandemic Management Suite ‘SAJAG’ powered by its AI & DL framework, commits to empower COVID-19 warriors and crusaders by delivering actionable intelligence with in-depth insights to combat spread of the COVID-19.
Due to covid the implementation is going slow but in progress and most of the cities are looking at few benefits, shared Mohapatra.
Opportunities in 2021
Videonetics: Videonetics are equally aligned with the vision of ‘Self Reliant India’. More than a decade, Videonetics has been built on its strong heritage of innovation and excellence in Visual Computing Platform. With our sheer determination and unified efforts, we will continue to invest in R&D to generate Indian Intellectual Properties with a patriotic mission to minimize our dependency on foreign technologies. Moreover, we have also started expanding our footprints in South East Asia, Middle East, US and UK markets by delivering and deploying solutions for various verticals.
Phoenix Robotix: The Company is working on Chennai Smart city and bid is on the final stage, Kohima Smart city will also start soon. More projects should roll by the government and benefits can be shared across the cities. The best practice can also be repeated in other places.
Challenge & Scope
Every aspect has different advantages and disadvantage, so here if we talk about smart cities it has also some challenges. Pointing out the challenges, Mohapatra explained managing various parameters to keep the ongoing smart cities including maintenance. The other challenges could be change in technology and taking decisions. In transport sector, the EV and its related infrastructure can play a major role; it can finish pollution and traffic issues.
Trivedi says, when we embarked in 2020, none of us could predict the way that the first six months would impact individuals around the globe. Each day, businesses are affected as workers remotely report for duty, finding new ways to connect with colleagues and do business, the security industry is embracing this trend, too. The industry may observe less demand of the general-purpose security & safety products. However, the global pandemic has led to a rapid transformation of our industry as people have started adopting AI based technologies to ensure business continuity, and this trend will only accelerate during the rest of 2020 & beyond. As our country has started reopening various facets of the economy and “Unlock” phase commenced – The economy has started coming back on track and we have started seeing positive trends across various business segments. However, a lot has to be done to achieve the lost ground over last many months since the pandemic started.
Companies and its offerings
Phoenix Robotix: Phoenix Robotix offers end to end solution (hardware , software and dashboard) for Industrial IoT to monitor on various parameters to increase the efficiency and performance of multiple assets and Industry.
Videonetics Technology: Videonetics is the world’s first company to develop AI & DL powered Unified Video Computing Platform (UVCP™), which has been magnificently managing video data as well as other sensor-generated multi-sensory data in a single unified framework. Videonetics UVCP™ has been trained with very large & diverse datasets, making it incredibly robust, smart and computationally efficient.
Smart cities’ features will be;
- Planning of ‘unplanned areas’ comprising a range of compatible activities as well as land use close to one another
- Expand housing opportunities for everyone
- Developing walkable localities, which will help in reducing congestion, air pollution and resource depletion. Also, this will give a boost to the local economy, promote interactions and ensure security.
- Creating or refurbishing roads for vehicles and public transport as well as for pedestrians and cyclists
- Developing and preserving open spaces – playgrounds, parks and recreational spacesPromoting various transport options – Transit Oriented Development, public transport as well as last-mile para-transport connectivity
- Making governance cost-effective and citizen-friendly by relying on online services to bring transparency and accountability
- Giving the city an identity, based on its local cuisine, health, culture, arts and craft, education, dairy, sports goods, hosiery, furniture, textile, etc.
- Applying smart solutions to services as well as infrastructure in development that is area-based, in order to make them better
