Though the 'Smart Cities' initiatives around the globe are great case studies, each city has unique characteristics and problems and should focus on finding contextual local solutions.
A Business Insider report quoted Managing Director of CISCO Systems India, Aamer Azeemi saying that "to improve the quality of life in India, we have to make people happy, and cited various practices which they have already implemented in the Indian cities".
One such example is the successful six month-old project pilot project by Cisco – a local information kiosk in Mantri mall, Bangalore, Azeemi explained.
The kiosk has a two-way conversation system to address public grievances and complaints with the police officer from the call centre. This provides advantage to both parties, where citizens can save time while lodging FIR, instead of going through rather tiring process, and police can monitor large area with their limited resources.
Other cities and states are in the process of implementing this pilot project, including Jaipur and Karnataka.
An ideal example of - services reaching to where the citizens are instead of other way round – which is essential for smart cities operation.
The report further added that Cisco is in discussion with the government of Karnataka to expand the service of the kiosk to other citizen services too. Also Cisco did lot of studies and found that even the perception of safety increases the taxes of a place, raising more money for the 'Smart Cities' goal.
The IT major has also successfully implemented other initiatives like - smart parking, smart street lighting, use of Wi-Fi in Electronic City, Bangalore, to demonstrate scalability of such smart solutions.
