Earlier this year on March 28, 2009, millions of people across 4,000 cities and towns in 88 countries came together to celebrate ?Earth Hour?. Millions of homes, corporate houses, businesses and even global landmarks switched off their lights for one hour, in a symbolic gesture to conserve energy and urge world leaders to fight global warming.
Such events make it evident that environment awareness and the demand for eco-friendly action is no longer the preserve of a handful of activists, but is now a much larger concern. The common man is beginning to acknowledge that environment sustainability is imperative not only to improve the quality of life for this generation, but also to ensure that our future generations don?t inherit urban spaces, bereft of clean air, water and fuel.
Three billion people (50% of the world?s population) now live in cities, and 20 most-populous cities consume 75% of the planet?s energy. And since this number is expected to grow to five billion by 2030, imagine the huge impact on environment. Urbanisation is definitely changing the global landscape, and more so in India?s case.
A 2007 UN State of the World Population report states that in India, urbanisation is taking place at a faster rate than the rest of the world. By 2030, 40.76% of India?s population would be living in urban areas compared to about 28.4% in 2007. As this rapid urbanisation takes place, we need to ask ourselves whether our cities provide a good quality of life to citizens or are they just becoming vast black holes of infrastructural problems and demographic challenges?
Most cities in India are plagued by never-ending infrastructure woes?congested roads, crumbling public transport, erratic supply of electricity, scarce water supply, haphazard healthcare systems and gross environmental violations. Flouting every tenet of environmental rulebook, our urban centres are adding to greenhouse gas emissions.
There is an urgent need to balance social, economical, and resource/environmental factors while planning and developing our urban centres, so that they are committed to sustainability and thereby, enable a better quality of life for their citizens in the long run. A practical blueprint on developing eco-sustainable, intelligent cities needs to be created and implemented.
Advancements in technology are paving the way to address typical urban issues?energy, healthcare, transport, security?in a holistic yet sustainable manner.
Network technology is evolving to enable solutions over a common platform that can help a city in efficient planning and management of public utilities, such as power and water, not only to make the systems more convenient to the users but also to ensure better utilisation of energy resources.
Typically, amenities like power, water and communications run on parallel networks with a separate set of controls. Intelligent network systems make possible the convergence of multiple proprietary networks, over a single IP backbone. For instance, management of power over the network allows input collation from a smart grid, thereby lowering or increasing usage limits and thresholds based on real-time information of overall energy production and consumption.
A comprehensive approach to managing traffic flow within a city and ensuring seamless integration of multiple modes of public transport can also be managed on the network. Public utilities can adopt green initiatives by encouraging consumers to make payments over the Internet, saving paper.
The technology-backed initiatives can maximise operational and energy efficiencies, translating into cost benefits for consumers and environmental benefits for society.
In a world where all things are becoming connected, the network will become the next utility, enabling the holistic, intelligent and environmentally sustainable creation and management of cities, industries and public services. According to a study on the potential impact of the network, cities that run on information can improve their energy efficiency by 30% within a period of 20 years.
But who will manage this change? With changing socio-economic paradigms, municipal authorities alone cannot be responsible for sustainable development. In order to make the desired impact, an ecosystem is needed?private enterprises collaborating with each other, and with governments and community groups.
Some concerned citizens and activists are already involved in community efforts for sustainability. Corporates are also realising that ?green? business practices make good business sense as rising costs for energy, datacentres, and business travel make conservation and optimisation strategies increasingly important to overall profitability.
City leaders are, therefore, shifting from a public metropolitan planning and execution approach to one of private-public partnership.
Technology companies will be at the forefront of this change, working with the government and other stakeholders to develop cities that run on information, are eco-sustainable and can improve city services and management, drive economic growth, and transform the quality of life for citizens.
The author is senior vice-president, South & Sri Lanka, Cisco Systems