Smart cities better equipped to manage emergency situations like Covid-19: Deloitte
Sep 05, 2020
New Delhi [India], Sep 5 : Smart solutions and data analysis can enable effective governance and administration to control emergency situations like Covid-19 while putting in place a disaster response and recovery strategy, according to a recent study by global consultancy Deloitte.
Tactical use of integrated command and control centres (ICCCs), data crunching and smart technology can help cities and their administrations take a proactive approach through evidence-based urban governance, said the report titled 'India Smart Cities' Covid-19 Response'.
Whether aligning the Covid-19 response strategy, mapping the population to provide effective ration delivery to the poor and targeted beneficiaries, or deploying resources with a proper objective in mind, the central government's smart cities programme is seen to have come in handy in driving a forceful response for the pandemic, it said.
Anindya Mallick, Partner at Deloitte India, said smart cities across the country seem to have taken this pandemic as an opportunity to innovate, learn, collaborate and find ways to respond to the crisis.
"Smart use of technology remains the key takeaway in fighting a global crisis of this nature. The integration of Covid-19 related services and other essential municipal services through an integrated platform has led to efficient and effective inter-departmental coordination and data-driven decision making by city administrators," he said.
As the pandemic broke out, the government took several measures to contain the spread of the virus in the country.
It contained the spread of pandemic at community level by imposing a countrywide lockdown.
It tracking and traced Covid-19 patients besides augmenting and strengthening the healthcare system to manage testing, quarantine and hospitalisation of cases.
At the same time, it announced a fiscal stimulus package to help economically vulnerable sections of the population and businesses impacted on account of the pandemic.
At the same time, about 45 cities across the country converted their ICCCs to Covid-19 war rooms to monitor the city-level emergency response, including effective implementation of the lockdown.
They monitored activities across the city to manage the lockdown, identifying incidences of violation and taking responsive actions for enforcement.
The ICCCs also tracked suspected and positive cases, enforced quarantine protocols, facilitated treatment of those affected, developed and launched a citizen app for assessing, tracking and tracing suspected and positive cases.
Authorities also developed a GIS-based Covid-19 tracker dashboard demonstrating various key parameters including disease hot spots and heat maps to provide information on the number of positive cases, recovered patients, daily case count, trends and age groups affected for data-driven decision making and predictive analysis of likely hotspots.
While managing the lockdown, smart solutions facilitated an uninterrupted supply of essential items -- their transportation, storage and delivery across the city by creating a strong supply chain.
