SCCP II: Smart and Sustainable Cities
India currently faces unprecedented urbanization that strains urban developers, but is also propitious for the development of smart and sustainable cities that improve the quality of life and efficiency of services and operations. The U.S.-India SCCP ll team has held two workshops to help India achieve its goal of constructing 100 smart cities by 2023, which is
contingent on adopting and enhancing standards and conformance vis-à-vis building codes, ICT, intersectoral technology, and other smart city components.
In July 2019, ANSI held the Workshop on Smart and Sustainable Cities: Leveraging Technology for Smart, Safe, and Sustainable Buildings and Cities in New Delhi. The workshop convened U.S.
and Indian experts from NIST, ICC, KPMG, BIS, CII, amongst others to discuss the definition of a smart city, best practices for enforcing building codes, and key tools and technologies for smart cities.
The definition of smart cities varies by country and state, and the experts had an open discussion to identify key aspects of smart cities in India, such as accessibility to all citizens,
combining physical and human infrastructure, the necessity of adequate housing and clean waters, interoperable technology, and others. This discussion was paramount in highlighting the cross-sectoral nature of smart cities.
The session focused mostly on the building aspects of smart cities and how developers can optimize green buildings and code enforcement.
ANSI continued on this topic by hosting the Smart Cities Conference: 5G Network Technologies, Applications, and Standards in September 2019 in Bangalore, India.
The workshop addressed the burgeoning role of 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT), which have critical roles in development and execution of smart cities to maximize government,
resource, and infrastructure efficiency. Standards play a crucial role in these emerging technologies as they continuously development. Standardization has a precarious role in emerging technologies such as these because standards
developers must flexibly create standards to complement and optimize 5G and IoT while cautiously ensuring not to develop standards to soon that restrict the development and potential of the technologies.
Expert speakers highlighted how this is a key area to cooperate to ensure the standards and technologies are quality and assist India in its smart cities initiative. Speakers also addressed the role of security,
privacy and testing with 5G, which increase in importance as it progresses in development.
Urban developers require standards across various sectors including green buildings, transportation infrastructure, Internet of Things (IoT) data management, and more to realize this ambitious goal.
BIS created the Civil Engineering Division Council (CEDC) to handle the Indian smart city standardization efforts in tandem with the Electronics and Information Technology Division Council (LITDC).
The BIS ICT council established the following working groups for smart cities:
- LITDC WG1 Smart cities
- LITDC WG2 Active Assisted Living
- LITDC WG3 Smart Energy
- LITDC WG4 Smart Manufacturing
The U.S.-India SCCP II webpage contains the workshop flyer, agenda, presentations, and handouts.
