NEW DELHI: As per a latest press release by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCCs) have been operationalised in 75 smart cities out of 100. As the COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, the smart cities took immediate steps to manage the crisis with four areas of action i.e. Information, Communication, Management, and Preparedness.
State, district and city administrations converted these ICCCs into the COVID-19 war rooms in order to utilise the existing smart infrastructure to curb the effects of pandemic. All the 100 smart cities of India installed digital technology and other innovative solutions to mitigate the pandemic. As per the release, all the details of such steps are mentioned in the document named ‘The Smart Response to COVID-19: A Documentation of Innovative Actions by India’s Smart Cities during the Pandemic’, MoHUA mentioned in its press release.
The Government of India launched the Smart Cities Mission in 2015 for the development of 100 cities. These cities were selected via four rounds from 2016 to 2018. According to MoHUA, presently, these cities have tendered a total of 6,452 projects worth Rs 1,84,998 crore. However, the COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdown has led to temporary interruptions in the work of Smart Cities Mission across the country.