Smart Cities need to increase role in fighting COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic made the Government of India realise that only through a coordinated approach can it be overcome and the lives of people be saved. Keeping this in mind, the Centre, in coordination with different levels of government, put several resources to use against COVID-19 which were never designed for that

One such resource were the bodies established under the Smart Cities Mission of India, particularly the Integrated Command and Control Centres, or ICCCs. These centres were originally designed to coordinate all civic services in smart cities and to act as a one-stop kiosk for resolving all citizen grievances. During the pandemic, however, the ICCCs were used by various Smart City Missions (SCMs) like that of Pune, Bengaluru and Surat, as COVID ‘war rooms’. Through these centres, the SCMs conducted CCTV surveillance of public areas, contact tracing and border management, redressal of queries related to COVID-19 and tele-counselling and tele-medicines. Officials of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs of the Government of India also said that they are coordinating work amongst all available ICCCs in various cities in order to aid them in expanding their operations to cover as many people residing in their cities as possible.

Cities like Pune used heat mapping and predictive analysis to track COVID-19 cases and declare areas as containment zones well in advance. This helped the city control the spread of the pandemic to a great extent. Surat Smart City Limited established a public information dashboard on their website to keep citizens informed of data related to COVID-19 cases being reported from the city, along with spatial mapping of areas within the city limits to inform citizens of the hotspots of the virus spread. These initiatives of the SCMs helped in a great way in curbing the virus spread, tracking infections and effectively making citizens adhere to COVID-19 precautions and quarantine guidelines.

All in all, the efforts of Smart City Missions of different cities were commendable and the need-of-the-hour. However, what lacked was coordination and planned implementation within and amongst the ICCCs and between other urban local bodies (ULBs). Coordination between ICCCs and ULBs could have helped in a great way in bettering healthcare and sanitation facilities, especially when the number of cases increased to such an extent that hospital beds and oxygen supply in cities became extremely scarce. With coordination amongst ICCCs, this problem could have been reduced by possibly even diverting COVID-19 positive moderately ill patients to neighbouring cities and arranging medical equipment like oxygen cylinders from cities which were nearby and had excess oxygen supply.

Additionally, another problem that many SCM faced was the absence of an ICCC. New Delhi, for example, did not have a functional ICCC during the first or the second wave of the pandemic. The Government of NCT of Delhi has claimed that it will make the ICCC operational in the city by mid-May this year. Similar has been the case of over 50 ICCCs of the total 100 cities that had been designated as ‘smart cities’ by the Centre in 2015. The ICCCs in these cities are either non-existent or still under construction. On the other hand, of the nearly 50 ICCCs which are operational, some are either not updated with latest technologies and do not therefore get real-time information, while others are under-staffed and unable to perform operations.

Scientists have advised that the country will face a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic. It is therefore high time for the government to ramp up health infrastructure and prepare resources well in advance in order to ensure they are not scarce anymore. At the same time, SCMs of the 100 smart cities also need to work round the clock to develop centralised ICCCs so that they can better aid in the fight against the pandemic.