“The Hallmark of the Future is going
to be INNOVATION”
We always live in hybrid technology coupled with
heterogeneous environments. Technology brings humongous challenges and changes
in the manufacturing and service Industries by the way of automation. The sensor
network, which is in turn, connected Internet & cloud computing by using
wireless or Wireline technology which offers services under the banner of
Internet of Things or Internet of Everything (IoE). Slowly the world is moving
towards “Touching and Sensing
Technology” would like to coin as TST.
With IT revolution in 1980’s, Telecom revolution & BPOs in
1990s, 2000’s digital platform in social
networks and many applications, we have now started looking at digital transformation
and have begun working towards that. In the current scenario, if we deep dive
and analyse the changes happening around us, will notice how technology is
changing people’s lives - getting services or doing transactions. In India, way
back in 1995, a small, tiny mobile phone was meant for making a call. Today, it has become a powerful computer in our hands with the
name “Smart Phone”. This was
possible only because the network speed exceeded the computer power. Smart
devices have now been pushed to the edge or periphery in the networks.
Human-to-Human interactions are coming down and self-services
are moving up. Today’s buzz words in the leading journals’ include Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Predictive Analysis, Big Data,
Deep learning, Virtual Reality, Machine
Learning etc. These are the technologies that will bring about a paradigm
shift in the recruitment of aspiring young engineering talents to get into
decent jobs in large corporations. It would provide a great opportunity to make
whopping changes in the disorganized sectors to make them into organised ones. The employment opportunities in the organised
sectors are going to shrink. We should start thinking how to confront this
situation. There are more than 50-60% enterprises including some of the government
sectors in the world, working in an unorganised way. How do we transform them
into organised sectors? How do we create a platform for them to do their
business in a more efficient and transparent way to bring more values to their
business? Huge opportunity, isn’t it?
What is Platform? It is nothing but Integration, Transformation, Visualization and Analysis of data. It is not a product by itself. The
services, applications and solutions on the platform are the products.
Smart City is one such initiative taken by the present government
to convert the silo vertical government organisations (mostly organised on silo
basis but unorganized in a collaborative basis) and get them connected through
a platform to enhance their service delivery, improve their service quality,
reducing the service cost and reducing the consumption so that they can go
closer to the people and understand their needs and address their grievances. This is the need of the hour. Unless we start
doing this now, it will be difficult to control the expected population, around
60% of which is moving towards urban-centric town to meet their livelihoods in
another two decades. This Initiative will also bring in a lot of employment
opportunities to young aspiring engineers in the coming years and will bring massive
changes in people’s lives in the years to come. In a nut shell, in my view, Smart
city is all about bringing “Work-Life
balance to a Common Man” and upgrade the social, intellectual and economic
status of an individual.
There are four strong pillars of Smart city viz. Wireless
Sensors Networks & Camera, Communications Network, Cloud Computing and
Command Control Centre. Unless we have
stable power and Communication network, we may not be able to achieve the
desired results of building “SMART CITY”.
Also, each and every citizen plays an important role not only in building
the Smart city but also in sustaining and maintaining it. According to me, the contributions
towards building a smart city are in the order of 30:30:40. That is, 30% contribution
by Government, 30% technology with proper engineering and remaining 40% by the smart
citizen.
The challenges around us are how to make the many stake
holders responsible in building smart city to work in synchronizations to
achieve the desired goal. Like in a live orchestra, many individuals who are
highly competent to play their own instrument come together put in their best
efforts, co-operate and co-ordinate with one another to produce great music to
their audience. The basic platform for this live orchestra to be successful is,
Shruthi, Raga, and Thala, with
conductor. Similarly, in order to roll out smart city, it is essential to have a framework called “Standard Operating Procedure” with Master
Integrator.
The impact of smart city will be felt once we derive
meaningful information from the data generated from sensors, actuators and surveillance
cameras, which will be in the order of zettabytes and take remedial actions. The
Big data platform as a part of Smart city platform is
capable of analyzing the Volume, Variety, Velocity and Veracity of data on a real-time
basis, to derive meaningful information. Since the actions are going to be
based on data, we need to ensure that data received are correct, enriching the
data with external environment and embedding these data as stage gates to make
decisions.
Moving forward, there will be a huge demand for Analytics. Engineers
with more statistical, analytical background who are able analyse data coming
from many platforms to derive a meaningful and actionable items would have
brighter futures. Institutions should focus towards producing the best engineers
based on demand.
Embracing and implementing technologies are going to have a significant
change in People &Industrial Efficiency, Increase Life expectancy, Traffic
Control, Shopping experience and Usage of Environmental capital for sustainable
economic growth.
“The Broader vision
behind Smart city should be about authorities leveraging the data available to
create new interconnected services that makes city most efficient and
safe”
