State governments are moving fast to align with startups to curb the spread of coronavirus, but city administrations are also coming up with some innovative solutions. And, India’s smart cities are leading the way. Although the Smart Cities projects have got delayed due to paucity of funds, some cities are showing their mettle as far as the fight against Covid-19 is concerned.
Agra has been at the forefront of this development. Awarded the best smart city tag in pan-India rankings, the city administration has been working with Gaia, a SaaS startup to leverage its SmartFeedback technology and Microsoft’s Azure platform to track Covid-19 cases.
Amrita Chowdhury, director, Gaia, says Agra has been tracking 550 live high-risk cases. “Citizens using the platform can self-assess and this information is then passed on to city authorities. Thereafter, a pincode-wise mapping is done where medium and high-risk people are identified,” Chowdhury says, adding, “The software helps administration collect information on where hotspots are emerging.”
“The Citizen Covid19 Risk Self Assessment app is one of the many initiatives of Agra Smart City and District Administration for emergency response management. This app will help the city identify high-risk individuals, get health teams to out to them with their permission, and through data analytics, see emerging location based spread trends, if any, so that we can take prompt response action,” says Arun Prakash, CEO Agra Smart City and Ayukt, Agra Nagar Nigam.
Although Artificial Intelligence is not being used now, Chowdhury says that rapid visualisation and data analysis is being done to provide better solutions.
But Agra is not the only administration leveraging technology. Smart city systems across the country are being used as integrated command and control centre (ICCC). Most cities have tied up with medical staff to provide telemedicine solutions. Kota, for instance, has been connecting local medical stores with people for delivery of medicines.
“Smart cities are all about using IoT and smart solutions. Patient management can be one of the solutions. Smart cities can collate this data. They can also coordinate with health workforce and determine if they need to concentrate testing centres in specific areas,” says Anindya Mullick, partner, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP. “After this we will have a cluster lockdown and smart cities will play an important role in collation and mapping of essential services. This is a good opportunity and will help improve our response in other emergency situations.”
The crisis is certainly helping cities get smarter. Now, it is uponcity administrations to use this data for more collaborations and further development of apps by startups.
