Smart City gets a new identity at INK Conference

JAIPUR, INDIA: The 21st century and beyond would be dominated by cities and around 215 million people would be migrating to urban areas in India by 2025. "And today’s cities can barely handle the burden of their  current populations," said Ayesha Khanna, a technology and innovation strategy expert.

Speaking at the 2nd edition of INK Conference in Jaipur she said, at this point of time core services like energy, water, communications, transportation, and public safety are wasteful, inefficient and
decrepit. Even though cities occupy only 2 per cent of the landmass of the Earth, they consume over 75 per cent of the Earth’s resources.

"The only way to prevent rapid urbanization from being an environmental disaster is to operate cities in a brand new way: faster, smarter, cleaner," she said to an enthralled hall of audience.

By referring  “smart city” she told the audience that it will happen only when all parts of its infrastructure and government services are digitally connected and optimized and city dwellers become the 'stakeholders' of the city.

Giving some example she said the city’s intelligent infrastructure is powered by three key technologies that share environment and citizen data constantly: sensors, the cloud and smart interfaces. Sensors, tiny devices that can measure variables such as motion, sound, and bacteria, collect information and send it back to a central database - the cloud.

The founder and director of the Hybrid Reality Institute, a research and advisory group focused on human-technology co-evolution and geotechnology in the US, she said in India there would be around seven smart cities developed in near future that would stick to the guidelines of the smart and generative city concept.

The annual international conference also witnessed achievers from all walk of life narrating their 'stories of life' at the event themed as 'power of the journey'.

Among the speakers who shook the audience were 15-year-old girl Aisha Chaudhary, afflicted with a serious lung disease, with her five lively messages she learnt from the ups and downs of her challenging life; American film and Opera director Julie Taymor; author Amish Tripathi; jewelery designer John Hardy; conservation biologist Claire Kremen; technology expert Ayesha Khanna and social entrepreneur Mohamed Ali Niang.

The four-day conference is having different sessions in which the speakers-doers and thinkers across different disciplines across the globe are sharing their experience, innovations and knowledge.