Essay

My Role as a Smart Citizen for the development of Pune City

A smart city is not just smart technology. A smart city is a city which can provide- with fewer
resources- more efficiency, more services for its citizens and a higher quality of life in a
rapidly urbanizing world. It has become obvious that we need much more
interconnectivity and interaction of all responsibilities within a city and also within
businesses to work towards creating smart cities. Smart cities need smart citizens!
Innovation, collaboration and their citizens make cities smart.
It is estimated that by 2020, more than half of the worlds populations will live in urban areas,
with millions of people in the same kind of dangerous conditions as new city residents faced
centuries ago.
The profound challenges that we face in PUNE: waste management; aging city
infrastructures and stretched budgets; are all very good reasons for us to put
priority to our endeavors on smart cities.
The vast potential that integrating technologies across the ICT, energy and mobility and transport sector
can bring to a city present a very good reason in itself, too!

So the question becomes: as this push of people into cities increases, how can we make sure the
cities of tomorrow are smart?
Following are seven the main priority areas:
A) Priority Area 'Sustainable Urban Mobility'
Potential Actions
Actions to better address supply 1. Improve clean power for transport: vehicles and infrastructure: Tackling electric/different
hybrid technologies and their infrastructure to accelerate mass-shift to cleaner forms of transport
will help achieve economic gains, reduce energy consumption and address the inter-dependence
with energy systems and public space.
2. Foster seamless door-to-door multi-modality in urban transport: Better connecting transport
modes, nodes and mobility services (e.g. inter-modal mobility hubs, integrated information

platforms for transport operators, cooperative ITS) will enable integrated public transport and
new urban traffic and transport management solutions.
Action to better address demand 1. Open up intelligence in urban transport systems: Supporting partnerships that use open data
will create additional value for. Public transport, ICT and energy providers, but also private
users/social media leading to demand-responsive and integrated mobility services which help
minimize energy consumption.
2. Promote sustainable and integrated mobility planning
3. Promote use of cleaner vehicles

B) Priority Area 'Districts and Built Environment'

Potential Actions
1. Toolkits for Districts: Develop scalable design and multi-criteria toolkits that support
integration of existing and new buildings within city districts
2. Auditing Tools for Districts: Develop auditing tools/systems and development of framework
on measured variables for existing as well as new buildings and districts.
3. Monitoring Tools for Energy: Develop and deploy monitoring tools to achieve performances
in terms of energy efficiency and financial viability
4. Smart Materials & Solutions: Develop and deploy smart materials and solutions for lighting,
heating, cooling and electricity systems as well as infrastructure for electric vehicles in public
(streets, open spaces, buildings) and private spaces.

C) Priority Area 'Integrated Infrastructures'

Potential Actions
1. The humble lamppost: Reduce energy consumption and maintenance costs through
implementing e.g. efficient long-lasting lighting; motion-sensing; PV-power. Use lamppost for
e.g. Wi-Fi; CCTV (parking, safety etc). Test innovative business models.
2. City Information Platforms: Combine and manage multiple data sources; provide interoperability and data protocols between city domains (using public + infrastructure data + domain
/ system data). Basis for operational and decision making improvements.
3. Shared infrastructure planning: Systematically exploit synergies between smart grid and
broadband infrastructure, including shared engineering works, reuse of passive infrastructures,
communications networks, data centers and services.

4. Transforming the Energy Chain: Integrated smart grid (renewable + storage + heat pumps +
EMS at consumer side). Managing a two-way energy chain, balancing demand and supply
dynamically between renewable and traditional sources. Link customer into chain as a key actor.

Smart Grid Systems

5. Road systems: Mobile ITS (location-based route / travel information + traffic light systems =
optimized traffic flow to reduce emissions and energy consumption). Work with traffic
management systems and automotive industry to re-use urban sensors deployed in street scenes.
Exploit sensors and devices to predict traffic conditions / improve road and traffic management.
6. Parking systems: Connect infrastructure, people and devices, and sensors to address the up to
25% of congestion caused by people looking for parking. Mode shift through yield management
pricing.
7. Waste-4-Heat: Use waste heat of process industries + remote heating infrastructure + local
CHP system to reduce dispersed CO2 emission and save energy.

Heat Pump
Alternatives

and

Micro-CHP

as

Complementary

Boiler

8. Adverse Events : Connect key information sources with city monitoring systems (sensors,
people); with city life-lines infrastructures (transport, power, water, and communication) to
build city resilience in the face of incidents and crisis.
9. Intelligent Bins: Putting sensors on bins enables cities to communicate within the waste
collection system, optimizing truck routing, minimizing energy consumption and congestion, and
satisfying customers

D) Priority Area 'Citizen Focus'

Potential Actions
1. Tools for Community Insight and Engagement: Create and prove best practice common
methods to understand communities and citizens, in order to improve service planning, and
engage communities in delivering intended outcomes.
2. Social network regulation
3. Neutral Neighbourhood: Stimulate competitiveness between neighbourhoods through e.g.
competitions against published community-relevant metrics; within cities and between cities to
engage and mobilise citizens to (over-) achieve community goals.
4. Digital Inclusion initiatives: Link with ongoing digital inclusion initiatives to ensure all
citizens are actively incorporated in smart city initiatives.

5. Stakeholder platform: Set up a platform physical and digital - consisting of relevant

stakeholders such as companies, cities, local governments and respected individuals to give
feedback and organize mentoring for new companies and organizations and for citizens to
feedback on policies. This should build on existing on-line and other initiatives (e.g. living labs;
hack days)
6. City Visualisation: Implement visualization techniques to involve citizens in city planning and
real-time views; making the invisible visible. This could also help create funding transparency
and allow citizens to take an active role in city planning.

E) Priority Area 'Policy and Regulation'

Potential Actions
1.Innovation zones : Create the spaces in cities to test and evaluate the effect of new innovation
models, revised policies and regulations, as well as consider different or reduced forms of
regulation, where feasible.
2. Smart City Strategy and implementation plan: Strategic vision backed by all stakeholders
and supported by long-term policies and respective regulatory frameworks as the basis for an
effective and efficient implementation process
3. Innovative funding models: Intelligent combination of funding instruments and funding
commitments will enable to bypass any credit crunch and better plan project-bundles /
infrastructure investments
4. Improving regulatory processes
5. Streamlining regulation

F) Priority Area 'Integrated Planning and Management'

Potential Actions
1. Smart Planning Forum
2. Urban Simulation and Planning
3. Smart Energy Map: Demonstrate agile energy maps capturing direct and indirect production
and consumption of energy over sectors
4. City communication and engagement: Demonstration of innovative peer-to-peer and
citizen-to-government-platforms for exchange of ideas and opinions regarding city planning and
management issues

G) Priority Area 'Knowledge Sharing'

Potential Actions
1. Cross-Sector Exchanges: Implement short-term secondment between Cities-NGOs-Industry;
crowd-source best ideas from alumni; review and repeat process.
2. Technical support for capacity building

3. Knowledge Brokers: Appoint knowledge brokers in city administrations to facilitate

transfer of knowledge between sectors and governance levels. Network these to improve the
circulation of information about smart city solutions.
4. Readiness Check-Lists
5. Bilateral Mayoral Exchange
6. City Advisory Board: Establish City Advisory Boards including cities, industry (with R&D
and market knowledge) and research community, to fit priorities along entire project chain to
research needs.