NITI Aayog Pune Smart City Hackathon

While the city has abundant water supply at an aggregate level, Pune’s mass-scale urbanization will result in a water deficit in the long term. Water supply was voted as the second most important issue in the Citizen Engagement survey conducted by Pune Smart City. Inequality of water distribution among citizens is identified as the main challenge; while around 85 percent of citizens receive more than 150 liters per capita per day (lpcd), 14 percent receive less than this amount on daily basis. This inequality is driven by lack of infrastructure (e.g., reservoirs, pipelines, monitoring equipment) in certain regions, for instance, about 30 to 35 percent is supplied as non-revenue water (NRW) due to internal leakages and lack of water meters thereby leading to excess consumption.

Pune city intends to solve this challenge in a sustainable manner. It has already taken several important steps in this regard like development of reservoirs and a distribution network to ensure equitable water supply, SCADA* based smart metering and command control center, waste water sewage treatment plants, and the improvement of nala pipelines. The priority areas identified within the water theme are:

1) Cleaning up of water sources – rivers and lakes
2) Increasing water storage capacity for Pune
3) Equitable distribution of water 24/7
4) Reduction in water leakages in the system by reducing illegal connections
5) Reduction theft of water in the distribution system
6) Improving collections of water charges, reducing arrears
7) Usage of Smart technology to meter and monitor usage of water
8) Rain water harvesting
9) Efficient grievance handling
10) Behavioral change of citizens
11) Give up ‘Water Subsidy’ campaign
12) 100% treatment of waste water before discharge and maximizing reuse of treated waste water

*Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) is a system of software to control processes, gather data and interact with remote devices

Despite being one of the top Indian cities with 57% waste segregation at source, solid waste management was voted as the third most important issue in the Citizen Engagement survey conducted by Pune Smart City. The city generates around 2,200 tons of solid waste a day. This is expected to grow further due to mass urbanization and the addition of 11 villages into PMC’s governance. Managing solid waste is a significant effort on a daily basis with over 2,000 feeder points, 500 container bins in 350 bin locations, 600 garbage collection and distribution vehicles and 6,500 staff (of which 94% is field staff). Collected waste is transported through 7 ramps to 25 biogas plants, mechanical or composting plants, shredders, a wet waste bio CNG processing plant, a mixed waste treatment plant or the landfill.

Pune city intends to solve this challenge in a sustainable manner. It has already taken several important steps in this regard like the ‘Zero Waste’ initiative that promotes at-source segregation and recycling. Furthermore, through the ‘No Visible Waste’ initiative, Pune Smart City is improving collection by augmenting its fleet, mechanizing road sweeping, and implementing smart litter bins. The vehicle tracking solutions, departmental management information systems and grievance redressal system will further help in governance of these operations. The priority areas identified within the solid waste management theme are:

1) Ensuring 100 % segregation at source
2) Increasing recycling and reuse
3) Garbage pick-up based on demand
4) Improve scientific disposal of garbage
5) Behavioral change of citizens
6) Keeping streets and public spaces clean with ‘No Visible’ waste
7) Penalizing littering / spitting
8) Reducing public urination and defection on public streets and property
9) Ensuring 100% of the population have access to toilets
10) Availability of clean and hygienic public & community toilets
11) Increased vigilance and monitoring with the help of citizens
12) Governance and monitoring of Municipal field staff

Citizens are already grappling with many urban challenges on a regular basis. Rapid urbanization is bringing along more challenges, including cities becoming more vulnerable to crime. Safety and security was a key issue raised in the Citizen Engagement survey conducted by Pune Smart City. Pune aspires to create a zero-crime area: a secure city that is safe for all sections of the society, particularly women, children and senior citizens.

Pune has been an innovator on multiple dimensions to solve urban challenges arising out of rapid urbanization. With citizen safety and security being identified as a priority in Pune, the city has taken on the challenge to resolve these challenges. It has already taken several important steps by deploying emergency call boxes across the city that can quickly connect a citizen to the command and control center. Pune city has also installed a public-address system, including flood sensors and variable message displays that can facilitate real-time communication with the citizens. Several other technology-led measures are on the drawing board like installing CCTV surveillance cameras at over 1,300 locations, a buddy app from Pune Police and various other methods of effective policing. However, more effective, technology-led interventions can be deployed to inspire confidence in Pune’s citizens. The priority areas identified within the Safety & Security theme are:

1) Increasing safety for women, children & senior citizens
2) Increasing road safety
3) Increasing fire safety
4) Improving city’s disaster management capabilities
5) Improving response time to citizen alerts
6) Enhancing safety measures in public transport
7) Enhancing safety in public spaces and gardens
8) Enhancing monitoring system for authorities
9) Enhancing communication systems with authorities in emergency
10) Safeguarding citizens against Monkey Menace

Under the Smart City Mission guidelines, a smart city must provide healthcare access to all its citizens. Pune Smart City has also recognized this as a key implementation agenda for the city. Among the three levels of public healthcare – primary, secondary and tertiary, primary care is most crucial as it focuses on preventative and curative care, and reduces the long-term health risks for individuals. Pune aspires to be a "Healthcare for all" city: a city where every citizen is able to avail the basic healthcare facilities.

Pune has about 2.5 hospital beds/1,000 population, against the benchmark of 4 for urban India. Moreover, approximately 70% of the beds are in the private sector. In terms of primary healthcare centers (PHC), for a population of 60 lakhs, dispensaries and maternity hospitals provide a coverage of only 1 PHC per 1 lakh population against the norm of 1 PHC per 20,000. Pune has already started work on improving access to healthcare in the city through various initiatives such as mobile healthcare vans (currently covering 28 areas in Pune), Vasti clinics (currently 20 clinics to improve the healthcare access in slums) and implementing the Urban Poor Health Scheme (subsidized healthcare through the Urban Poor Health Scheme card). Pune now intends to implement smart solutions to increase the access of Primary healthcare. The priority areas identified within the Public Health theme are:

1) Increasing accessibility of PHC for citizens
2) Increasing utilization of healthcare infrastructure and staff
3) Managing medicine procurement and inventory
4) Reduction of pilferage of medicines and equipment
5) Making clinic processes more time efficient
6) Efficient record-keeping of patients
7) Enhancing preventive medication for citizens
8) Enhancing emergency care across all areas of the city
9) Efficient grievance handling
10) Ensuring hygiene and cleanliness at PHC's
11) Evaluation of staff and PHC's

As one of the smart city initiatives Pune plans to increase the digital connectivity of the city to increase citizen engagement. The sharp focus on implementation, feasibility and impact will ensure that plans and proposals made are not just plans but real, effective solutions that will actually solve the city’s problems. Pune city has already installed more than 150 wi-fi hotspots which are accessed by 1.5 million users resulting in 2.65 TB of daily downloaded data. This comes along with installation of more than 700 digital elements including environmental sensors, flood sensors, visual message display units, public address, Emergency call box and Integrated Command & Control Center (ICCC) systems across the city.

Pune, in the next phase, plans to install multiple IoT devices across the city to further increase the two-way interaction between ICCC and citizens. However, the initiative should be self-sustainable with minimum dependence on state or central funds for developing this infrastructure. Also, the city wants to develop the connectivity infrastructure in a sustainable manner keeping it environment friendly and energy efficient. With the focus of connectivity for all, the priority areas identified within the Digital Connectivity theme are:

1) Providing cost-effective connectivity to citizens
2) Ideas to monetize connectivity and infrastructure to make it self-sustainable
3) Providing high-speed un-interrupted connectivity
4) Increasing ease of access and geographical reach across the city
5) Decreasing congestion on existing networks
6) Providing environment friendly and energy efficient connectivity solutions
7) Resilient to environmental hazards and calamities
8) Increasing citizen engagement and their interaction with central bodies

*Smart elements enable two-way interactions to capture data, transmit the data to ICCC and provide useful information to citizens.