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With unified insights, resilience can be the new normal

Thanks to cloud computing and artificial intelligence, data-powered insights will deliver resilience and shape a more sustainable future in tomorrow’s Smart Cities, explains Rashesh Mody, Head of Monitoring & Control for AVEVA.

With planned streets, hydroelectric water conservation systems, and neighborhoods designed to protect residents from noise pollution, the ancient Indus Valley Civilization cities of Dholavira and Lothal reveal how humanity’s desire for urban welfare stretches back millennia. A thousand miles away – and 5,000 years down the line – sits Nava Raipur. As the new capital of the Indian state of Chattisgarh, Nava Raipur bridges every aspect of urban governance in a single, integrated command and control center (ICCC). Powered by AVEVA Unified Operation Center (UOC), the platform safeguards urban wellbeing in real-time.

For Nava Raipur’s administrative authorities, the ICCC acts as a hub of real-time system information, situational awareness, and response, including water, power, street lighting, public transport, traffic management, CCTV, contact centers, and e-governance. Such a combined Smart City solution – which AVEVA likes to call a ‘City in a Box’ – enhances sustainability and operational efficiency, delivering civic services to citizens, communities, businesses, and other stakeholders. This integrated, single-window approach paid off during the recent coronavirus crisis, improving decision-making in emergency situations. 

With real-time insight into all of the city’s critical infrastructure systems, Nava Raipur was able to match supply and demand with greater accuracy and respond to emergencies as they arose. Response times were cut by an average of 60%, according to N N Ekka, CEO, Nava Raipur. As the area went into lockdown, the UOC, together with its Smart City portal and app, made it easier for municipal authorities to communicate with the general population and respond to the needs of affected citizens, supporting the containment process. Over the course of the pandemic, AVEVA systems kept India’s civic services running, a role that has seen Nava Raipur in particular designated as a lighthouse for the Indian government around its keystone Smart Cities development initiative. 

This kind of resilience against urban threats has become a priority for governments around the world in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. If cities are to ensure continuity in the face of disaster, to rebuild quickly and thrive after an untoward event, they must possess high levels of urban resilience. By linking together smart infrastructure, interconnected communities, and good governance, cities can cope with and bounce back quickly from even the most challenging crisis.

Each of these aspects is brought together within cloud computing, which will provide the digital infrastructure of these Smart Cities. Because of its agile, flexible nature, the cloud becomes the repository for all a Smart City’s data, provides the computing power necessary to operate the increasing number of systems, and connects individuals and business units in varied locations. AVEVA’s Cloud-First approach, deployed in partnership with Microsoft Azure, has proved particularly valuable over the past year, as COVID-19 reinforces the importance of cloud computing as a platform that can deliver true business outcomes in the face of ever-evolving challenges. 

How technology delivers resilience

The pandemic has accelerated demands for digital transformation in every sector. Smart cities can leverage these connected layers to build resilience. As more aspects of a city are connected into the Internet of Things (IoT), data is collected from smart devices of all kinds. Microsoft Azure connects these dots to accelerate results together with AVEVA, delivering spatially aware solutions in real-world contexts. With an ICCC or a Digital Twin, artificial intelligence (AI) can analyze this data against multiple historical, socioeconomic, and other factors to generate actionable insights and predict imminent events, allowing the opportunity for decision-makers to embed resilience across the board with anticipatory planning. 

Such a “system of systems” integration can eliminate data silos, promote cross-functional collaboration, and optimize city governments’ capacity for faster, more informed decisions. The result isn’t just a quick and efficient crisis response. Policymakers can also model a variety of different possible scenarios, anticipate their probability, and then test each hypothesis to identify the highest-value solution and determine the most beneficial outcome – all while freeing up human analysts' time for more pressing issues. When so much flexibility is available to city leaders, resilience becomes the norm. Imagine how administrators could have responded to a freak snowstorm in Texas if they had been warned several months in advance.

Data-led approaches enhance sustainability 

But unified, data-driven approaches deliver in other ways. Resilience can help shape a more sustainable future for every resident of a Smart City. Bringing the most advanced technology into a unified data environment enables teams to maximize performance, minimize costs and delays, and build out efficient operations. Consequently, energy is used more efficiently and emissions are minimized, both outright through smart models and as a by-product of reducing the need for emergency alerts and rework.

The lessons of the last year prove that digital transformation can help organizations evolve into location-agnostic entities that connect remote workers and release productivity dividends in the process. As people who do not remember a time without smartphones enter the workforce, our role as humans is becoming less about repetition or transactional and procedural KPIs. Instead, today’s connected workers are being valued for the visionary insights they bring to their roles, and how they use industrial digital assistants to unlock ever greater value. 

The ICCC and the Digital Twin are fundamentally just comprehensive lenses that develop the understanding of a Smart City. As technologies, they only begin to truly deliver value when combined with human insight and capability, in the hands of the Connected Worker.

What makes AVEVA unique is our full portfolio of products that covers not only asset operations and predictive management, but also the CapEx and engineering sides, where we are currently developing new AI and machine learning modules to help our customers make better design decisions.

The digital transformation initiatives of the past year have underscored the critical role of technology in facilitating the Smart City of the future, connecting information and process silos with a common digital thread that extends across the urban value chain and creates innumerable opportunities to unlock new value for tomorrow’s citizens. As we transition towards a new normal in a post-pandemic world, digital capabilities will increasingly act as a barometer for economic resilience. 

 


Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors' and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house