Technologies like Internet of things (IoT) & information and communication technology (ICT) should be in place, for a city to become a smart city. The definition of a smart city goes as; ‘a city relies on technologies towards improving the efficiency of civic services of the city’. A smart city is defined as the city makes use of technology and urban informatics with an objective of improving and optimizing the efficiency and effectiveness of people oriented services. In the past, a smart city was a dream, and with the invention of parallel technologies, the vision of ‘smart cities’ became a reality. Smart city formation was inevitable as the rapid urbanization grew unprecedentedly; and to accommodate this growth, the concept of smart city came into existence. With global technological and socioeconomic developments, smart cities are accorded with prominence and are poised to grow. Cities like Bangalore are on the verge of becoming the ‘The Smart Capital’ of India with its burgeoning high-tech industry.
The city which gathers local information and feed on to public portal is called ‘information city’. Combinations of technological infrastructure required to develop a smart city, which include:
The main objective of the technological initiative is to build a platform where the inter-connectivity of people is established, thus information is shared anywhere, anytime across the city. This set-up is called, ‘Digital city’. According to Yovanof, G. S. & Hazapis, G. N, a digital city “a connected community that combines broadband communications infrastructure; a flexible, service-oriented computing infrastructure based on open industry standards; and, innovative services to meet the needs of governments and their employees, citizens and businesses”.
A Smart city is equipped with high-tech digital communication technologies, which are applied in such a way that the well-being of the people in the cities is enhanced to a greater extent. Moreover, the people can manage cost reduction and consumption of resource, as well. For a city such as Bangalore, people can use the services of the best broadband in Bangalore and allow the IT infrastructure to feed on information they need. This is possible using sharing information techniques.
IoT connected devices along with fastest broadband WIFI technologies enable high speed broadband internet connectivity and devices that communicate each other. Using the integrated sensors attached to monitoring system, real-time data can be gathered from varied sources - devices and citizens- and later analyzed. These data help to identify inefficiency and address it through machine-to-machine communication. Applications developed for smart cities assist in managing city’s day-to-day business activities in a real-time. Smart cities are thus well-prepared to tackle foreseeable challenges.
The primary aim of technological initiative is stated as - A source that provisions opportunities where people inter-connectivity is brought about and thus information is being exchanged anytime, anywhere!
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