Budget 2014
The Indian IT and Security industry was looking forward to the budget announcement as this will have a direct impact on the demand for many such technologies that are a prerequisite for building Smart infrastructure.
Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley in his maiden budget speech announced to spend Rs 7,060 core, for developing 100 ’smart cities’ in the country. Jaitley said,”Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a vision of developing 100 satellite towns of the larger cities as ‘smart cities’.”
Earlier this year, the Singapore foreign minister has also shown interest in replicating their Tianjin Knowledge City model in several parts of India.
Smart City is a concept aimed to provide a set of new generation services and infrastructure with the help of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Smart cities are differentiated in terms of their governance, technological advances, economic benefits, and social and environmental standards.
According to the latest study of MarketsandMarkets, ”Booming of Indian smart city projects is due to growing urban population, which is expected to reach around 590 million creating pressure in the existing urban infrastructure. Such smart city projects will link all citizens, cities, government and many more with each other on a real time basis. It will also focus on reducing carbon emission and smooth flow of traffic in the urban cities.”
Upcoming Smart City projects in India
Smart City Kochi, is the one of the largest business parks of India and the second city in the Smart city global network. Smart city Kochi, is a joint venture between Government of Kerala and Tecom (a subsidiary of Dubai Holding). It is India’s largest knowledge based township creating 90,000 direct jobs.
India’s first International Financial Tech City, Gujarat International Financial Tech City (GIFT) would be setup at the approximately investment of Rs 70,000 crores and is the first green field investment project. The project has been initiated in 2011 and is expected to be completed by 2021. It will be futuristic smart city project, which would be a command center of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) managing every aspect from traffic to water movement.
Haldia Project is a pilot project initiated by European Business and Technology Centre (EBTC) in association with the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The project will be focusing on reducing carbon footprint in the industrial town of Haldia.
Recently, IBM has also announced its partnership with Lodha Group to build and manage smart city infrastructure for Palava, spanning over 4000 acres, located at the junction of Navi Mumbai and Dombivali.
Global networking products major Cisco Systems in partnership with the Electronics City Industries Association (ELCIA) is working on a pilot project, which would soon turn the electronics city in Bangalore into a smart city with smart parking, smart CCTV surveillance, smart street lighting, smart water management and community messaging. The first phase of this smart city project will be rolled out in Electronics City and will serve as a replicable model for the rest of Bangalore as well as other cities in India, across the region and other emerging markets.
Some of the major players included in the Smart City market are IBM, Alcatel-Lucent, Accenture, ABB, Cisco, Cubic, Honeywell, Intel, Siemens and Oracle.
Opportunities for Electronic Security Market
The Indian IT and Security industry was looking forward to the budget announcement as this will have a direct impact on the demand for many such technologies that are a prerequisite for building Smart infrastructure.
Sharing his pre-budget expectations, Sudhindra Holla, Country Manager, Axis Communications India said,” The government has various initiatives to build smart cities; and the budget needs to be concurrent with the plans. With the growth in infrastructure, security and surveillance will move to the next juncture of critical importance and in the smart cities. Video surveillance will be used beyond monitoring, to gather intelligent data. The budget, therefore, should set aside substantial investment, for video surveillance solutions.
Technologies and the convergence of various technologies play key roles in the development of smart cities. Video surveillance, biometrics and advanced database systems are gradually changing the way intelligence is being collected and treated. Without being noticed, CCTVs on the streets increase public safety through better surveillance.
Smart technology is already being applied in our country through smart phones, contactless payments, near field communication (NFC), the integration of smart cards with biometrics etc. It is believed that the next stage for the use of smart technologies will involve the integration of smart technologies with video surveillance, biometrics, access cards, etc.
Through this integration, law enforcement authorities will be able to identify criminals/offenders in a city and accordingly take steps towards enhancing their level of understanding. Countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia etc are already reaping the benefits of smart technology in the form of smart national ID cards wherein the users’ details are present on the card itself thereby proving to be a key identification card for the user.