Speaking at the second day of the The Geospatial World Forum 2018, Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of State (Independent Charge), Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs
TelanganaToday : 18th Jan 2018
In order to make urban spaces more livable, the Central government has been focusing on projects like Smart Cities and housing for all. And these projects need new technologies for their implementation and for them to become successful. According to senior government official, geospatial technologies play a pivotal role in urban transformation.
Speaking at the second day of the The Geospatial World Forum 2018, Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of State (Independent Charge), Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, said, “Geospatial technologies have given the power of God to urban planners and administrators. City managers can now see, visualise, detect, locate, assess, judge, resort and act by using the geospatial platforms. The technologies can help Smart Cities have command and control centres for their transportation and public surveillance system, monitor the consumption of energy in each and every building and also help citizens visualise their own contributions to the city.”
Other than, geospatial technologies, according to Puri, can also lead to convergence between the government departments and also with non-government agencies. This convergence between stakeholders outside the government is important to make cities a livable space.
“The real time analysis of resource allocation, decongestion can be done with geospatial technologies and this in turn will lead to faster solutions to specific problems that are identified.
A unified geospatial platform helps the city manager to construct a common operational picture and to treat his/her city as an enterprise. This makes the task of managing cities more efficient,” Puri said.
In terms of numbers, India will have 600 million people living in cities by 2030 and 70 per cent of that still need to build. And the Information and Communication Technology, according to the Minister, has delivered the power of astronaut into the hands of a child. And geospatial technologies are at the heart of this revolution and have bought the globe into our palms.
Speaking about the use of these technologies in the Smart Cities Mission, Puri said, “We are running a portal called Smart Net wherein we have geo-tagged projects related to Smart Cities Mission. We are doing this with all our missions and programmes that include the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan – wherein every toilet is marked. This has brought in greater transparency in government functioning.”