Smart Environment for Smart Cities

Smart City is about incorporating a ‘Smart Thinking’ in the city’s urban design and planning with a focus on People Place and Planet. This chapter will explore how Smart and Sustainable Environment is achieved when applying ‘Smart Thinking’ to the city’s development with Hong Kong as the case study of the principles. Hong Kong has more recently implemented environmental policies and initiatives in enhance the quality of the environment. By studying the various government policies at a strategic level that improve the city’s environment and analysing the public, private, institutional, academic and community initiatives, it provides a better understanding of the recent efforts in this regard. By assessing and reviewing Hong Kong’s effort in creating a smart and sustainable city, this chapter enables us to conclude with the overall quality and future positioning of the city’s environment in achieving a smart and sustainable Hong Kong.

Globally, many smart cities have been observed developing in different countries to offer high quality life and excellent working-living environment to their citizens. Being powerhouses of potential and skilled workers, smart cities contribute immensely to the overall development of the society and nation. As Smart home or smart building contributes at the core of effective smart city realization as an important and basic building block, for long term sustainable growth, it becomes quite imperative to monitor critical environmental parameters of building to make the life quite liveable. Such smart buildings monitored by Building Automation Systems (BAS), which have started demonstrating rapid growth potential on account of rising energy costs, stringent scarcity of fossil fuels for power stations and continuous abnormal-unpredictable climate changes, etc. Smart buildings with energy efficiency are need of the day and frequent terrorist attacks and rising security concerns worldwide, security and surveillance have been major focused areas today, where BAS are providing solutions. This chapter keeps its major emphasis not only on automatic monitoring of critical parameters, but also suggest technological approaches. Optimized utilization of energy usage, integration of renewables as well as with smart grid (energy backbone of smart city) shall also be covered in broad perspectives. The chapter shall suggest useful guidelines and recommendations for smart building automation for smart cities with interesting discussions of example case studies and implemented proof of concepts.

The principles of sustainable development necessitate that a balance be maintained between environment and development to ensure a sustainable future. In India, growing population and rapid urbanisation is resulting in significant land being used for settlements resulting in decrease in open spaces across many cities. It has long been established that the presence of natural areas in and around urban settlements contributes to a quality of life by providing important ecological, social and psychological benefits to humans. Amongst the rare exceptions are cities established after India’s independence, such as Gandhinagar and Chandigarh, where the urban greenery was pre-integrated in the City Master Plans at the initial design phase. However, the recent trends and analysis indicates that Chandigarh region has been seen struggling to maintain a balance between economic, environmental and social sustainability. Today, the periphery of Chandigarh is characterised by unregulated construction and rapid urbanisation. The Urban Green Spaces framework is not yet integrated in regional planning in a systematic way. In this research, the authors have assessed the organization and implementation of the existing framework and structure of the urban green spaces and its planning in Chandigarh Region Area. Though the green spaces in the city were integrated with the master plan, the periphery spaces have not been successfully addressed. This research aims to develop a comprehensive conceptual framework for urban green space for Chandigarh Region based on spatial planning and ecological principles. Attempt has been made to propose a smart urban green strategy for the Chandigarh region. Built upon the geospatial technological tools the framework will help in identifying and protecting the green spaces in the region.

Urban Green Spaces (UGS) are an integral part of urban environment and act as lungs for rejuvenating the urban environment and improving the quality of life and health of residents. UGS assist in regulating urban microclimate, biodiversity conservation, alleviating floods, enhancing air quality, and also promotes physical and mental wellbeing of urban populace. They also provide spaces for improved social environment and are considered highly beneficial for physical, social and cognitive development of urban children. UGS exists in diverse shape, size, vegetation cover and types and includes parks, gardens, railway corridors, road side green, derelict monument sites, etc. [1] defined UGS as urban land that consists of unsealed, permeable, soft surfaces such as soil, grass, shrubs and trees. Chandigarh is the first planned city of modern India and is known for its uniformly distributed and ample UGS within its boundaries. However, only quantification of amount of UGS is not sufficient to harness the full range of benefits from UGS for smart urban environment. The UGS should be accessible, uniformly distributed and maintained for its daily use by urban population. Although, there are restrictions on development within the Chandigarh, the high pace of urbanization, population increase and economic development in surrounding area is creating a pressure on infrastructure of Chandigarh as well. Chandigarh is also facing the issues of traffic congestion, air pollution and environmental degradation which were unheard before. The multi-faceted issues and benefits of UGS call for smart approaches for their effective utilization and management. Geospatial technologies integrated with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools provide a useful and smart tool in the hand of planners for quantification, assessment and evaluation of UGS for smart management. They can help in identifying the vulnerable areas as well as to assess the accessibility and distribution of UGS. They can be used for quantitative as well as qualitative analysis of UGS by applying a range of remote sensing data sets and geo-analysis. Many indices have been developed using these datasets for evaluation and monitoring of UGS. With the growing technological advancements in smart web-based tools, these technologies can also be used effectively for monitoring and management of UGS through integration of ICT tools and citizen centric services. This study demonstrates various innovative geospatial and ICT tools for evaluation and monitoring of UGS.

With time and technological development, human race is gradually elevating its dependence on machinery. The incessant usage of energy is therefore increasing manifolds. However, the realisation of reducing reliance on non-renewable energy sources was felt long back, no concrete steps are taken in day to day life. Solar Energy is considered to be one of the most abundant and sustainable forms of energy in a tropical country like India. It can thus be used to fulfil the demands risen due to dearth of urbanization. Gandhinagar was chosen to be one of the first Model Solar City after the Solar City Master Plan was prepared for the city. Considering the growing demand and need, the city was assessed using Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) technique for its building footprints and solar rooftop potential was evaluated using standard insolation models. It was felt that geospatial techniques play a pivotal role in mapping the potential zones useful for resource tapping. It is expected that only 30% of rooftop area can reduce the dependence on non-renewable energy by 200% in residential sector. Planned cities and all planned developments within the urbanized regions can adhere to use technology to calculate the effect of usable rooftop area, height of the structure or building and insolation falling on the surface so as to reduce their energy demand. Such technologically sound and low cost solutions can help in driving developing nations’ need of reliance on non-renewables. The study is an attempt to understand how efficiently geospatial technology can play a role in determining the solar potential and help in converting the city into a sustainable and green city by using the tool of “Smart Energy”.

Smart Water is an essential component of the smart environment since life, sustenance, growth and death of the environment depends on water. The concept of smart water is derived from the concept of smart cities having one to one relationship in their building blocks. Smart Water Management is a very high responsive, intelligent digital system operated by IOTs and ICTs, clouds, related computer-based models along with humans to identify water-related issues and even automatically using artificial intelligence solving it in real time without human interventions. The chapter presents an attempt to develop a Smart Water Management for Kozhikode Metropolitan area. Water in the study area is studied in conjunction with the spatial distribution of community in a watershed. The issues arising out of the present and potential usage pattern for households for community wellbeing and economic development is the basis of water resources management in Kozhikode Metropolitan Area (KMA). KMA enjoys substantial precipitation a year and is bound by two major rivers on both sides and are lined by many streams within its jurisdiction. However, KMA faces many water-related problems. A SWOT analysis was performed to identify and consolidate the capabilities of various watersheds and its communities in the study area. The issues faced by various communities were grouped into few categories and solutions were proposed for each community. Integrated Smart Water Management is proposed as a solution to the problems faced by the communities. It is footed on the principles of Water democracy, which is implemented through a system of ICT, IoT and decision support systems. The Integrated Smart Water Management System enables the community to be aware of the issues well in advance and find and implement solutions proactively. A spatial decision support system (SDSS) is proposed to help the community to take decisions related to water management. The SDSS takes many of the decisions as per the set procedure and alerts the community only cases where a systematic solution is not available. The integrated water management system implements the decisions taken by the SDSS, through its automatic sensors and actuators managing the water resources.

The character of the parcel of land in the Aravalli-Raisina Hill region selected for building New Delhi was almost dramatically transformed by Edwin Lutyens from its original rocky, semi-arid landscape to that of a pleasant garden city consisting of a low rise—low density habitat set amidst evergreen tree lined avenues, large open spaces and an expansive green lawn with shallow water bodies in the middle of the new capital city. From being the capital of a nation of 279 million souls in 1931, New Delhi presently serves as the capital city of the most populous democracy of the world having a population of over 1.2 billion. The idea of transforming New Delhi under the Smart City Mission of the Government of India launched in 2015 was possibly aimed at achieving two goals: (i) to be counted among the renowned smart capital cities of the world and (ii) to ensure ushering in of a new lease of life for New Delhi, far into the 21st century. Significantly increased dependence on solar energy, software driven management of city services and generally improved efficiency of traffic flows, security and other aspects of citizens’ daily life represent the perceived dimensions of smart New Delhi. Visualizing the environmental cost of such transformation is the concern of this chapter. In the process it is discovered, that many of the implemented and ongoing improvements are also in the list of Smart City project of New Delhi. Several of them have been already attempted as the city confronted a variety of challenges from time to time. The aspect of environmental impact resulting from addressing the challenges such as erecting the he LIC building at the periphery of Connaught Place (Rajeev Chowk), DMRC node in the central park of Connaught Place (Rajeev Chowk) and redensifying the single storeyed residential neighbourhoods by four storeyed apartments were hardly visualized and much less addressed. After a close review of the New Delhi Smart City Plan, against a multitude crucial parameters like population density, landuse, traffic, water, sanitation, power and waste management, the present chapter conducts an impact analysis and proposes a comprehensive environmental management plan.

The urbanization is becoming inevitable across the globe and for one of the fastest growing cities, Surat, the status is reported to be alarming. Faster growth of population and settlement with an increase in enterprise establishments generating opportunities are acting as counter magnets in the case of Surat. The city has a natural advantage by means of a perennial flowing river, Tapi, carrying fresh water to match the requirements posed by the citizens for domestic as well other usages. Keeping the environmental concerns at the central thought around urbanization in Surat, the chapter explores through the extent of development and resulting effects. Objectives for the study were set to understand different aspects and chalk out smarter proposals for governance of environmental resources through promoting sustainable practices. Keeping aware of the natural resources utilized or mobilized in terms of quantity and quality is considered a manner towards sustainable use. The chapter discusses the situation in Surat regarding the demographics, weather, natural drainage and topography, irrigation and agricultural activities, transport and linkages along with vehicle growth, air quality, water resources, vegetation cover and, industrial activities as drivers of the economy for the citizens. Further, an exploration of the state of essential service infrastructure of water supply, sewerage, solid waste and aquaculture is discussed. Keeping various activities pertaining to environmental concern, the role and challenges faced by various government agencies are deliberated. The concluding remarks are drawn identifying some of the critical concerns and alternative solutions towards smarter governance by adopting technological advances and reforming ongoing practice is recommended. The use of GNSS based solutions is emphasised for various purpose of monitoring and positioning considering the era when there is a maximum number of satellites available for fetching GNSS signals in the space above South-Asia. Employing and promoting the use of interoperability of various positioning satellite constellations through RTK solutions are briefly discussed.

Currently, most climate policies focus on the international and national level efforts. The international and national levels may set a strategic orientation, but the real effect of the strategies would be made through local actions. Cities and municipalities are the core of actions to cope with global and local environmental problems. In response to these problems, the cities are increasingly taking a strategic approach to climate changes to implementing overarching and systemic changes, by redesigning and reconfiguring the infrastructure networks through which energy is produced and consumed. Primarily, innovative technology, including those associated with smart city and smart-grid, force the local government to reconsider the different levels of technical capacities between them and industries. This study focuses on Yokohama city as a case to illustrate an ambitious energy technology innovation programme at the city-wide scale. It can fill the research gap of elaborating the Asian example of public-private sector cooperation, whether and how the allocate resources and expertise to deliver and experiment smart city as a green tech innovation.

Every city has a heart and soul of its own and may claim same rights as a human being. In early 2017 the court in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand ordered that the Ganges and its main tributary, the Yamuna, be accorded the status of living human entities [1]. The decision, which was welcomed by environmentalists, means that polluting or damaging the rivers will be legally equivalent to harming a person. The judges cited the example of the Whanganui River, revered by the indigenous Māori people, which was declared a living entity with full legal rights by the New Zealand government. The judges said the Ganges and Yamuna rivers and their tributaries would be “legal and living entities having the status of a legal person with all corresponding rights, duties and liabilities”. So, if we are to recognize the entire city to be a living entity, just like a smart human being, a smart city would also require constant monitoring of its health. Just like a human being using a smart band or a smart watch to sense his/her vital parameters such as temperature, blood pressure, glucose, heart rate, lipid profile, Vitamins etc. the smart city may also require several thousand sensors installed in its arteries and touch points to sense its vital organs. Just like a smart band transmitting vital statistics of a human being to a cloud, the measurement of sensors from the smart city touch points also requires to be transmitted to the cloud. Just like the human vital statistics are subjected to triggering health alerts in the event of spotting an anomaly, the smart city sensor data will also have to be subjected to rigorous analysis to observe if an anomaly of ill health to the smart city is spotted in any of its key node and alerts are triggered to the city guardians for immediate treatment. Furthermore, the process of diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and monitoring of human health becomes applicable for a smart city too. This chapter is divided into 4 sections, essential for smart city Practitioners drawn from smart Dubai’s use cases. Part 1 examines the technology and application of Internet of Things (IoT) for establishing a smart environment. This part will focus on the environmental parameters that can be sensed in a smart city? What kinds of sensors are required? What data do they generate and how do they get transmitted to the cloud? Part 2 delves into IoT Platform where the IoT data is stored, managed and secured along with the survey of IoT platform providers? Part 3 illustrates smart environment use cases of IoT and the parameters that can be sensed in a smart city. Part 4 gives a detailed account of the initiatives taken by Smart Dubai for smart environment management that can be adapted or replicated in other smart cities around the world.

This chapter has two parts. In the first part, the organizational details of the international research collaborative project “Smart Environment for Smart Cities” is discussed. In the second part are presented in consultation with the team leaders of the city study, their general conclusions of the study.