The City of Temples is now home to country's biggest command centre. With Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik flagging off the Bhubaneswar Operations Centre (BOC) on July 10, the city has set smart city goals for other tier-two cities. The City Express paid a visit to the newly-inaugurated BOC recently to bring you how it is going to monitor citizen-centric services for the Smart City.
Big game, big data
"We will be using the concept of Big Data at this centre. We are going to collect, store and analyze a large volume of information here using latest technology to enhance decision making,” says an official of BOC, requesting anonymity. A software, known as Smart city platform, has been developed for the same. It will act as an analytical tool with the help of which a graphical map can be created to analyse the future behaviour or pattern of any particular action, the official adds.
Hi-tech interior
The BOC has embraced technology at its best. The state-of-art centre has a massive video wall of more than 100-foot length (with 16 x 2 configuration of 70 inch panels). A large volume of close circuit television (CCTV) footage and highly sophisticated sensor data will be used to analyse the data on the screens and monitor the services.
Civic troubleshooter
The technological interventions for monitoring various activities will ease civic issues in the city. For instance, the data collected at the centre will indicate if traffic at a particular time of the day increases or decreases. If the pattern continues to remain same for a certain period, the data can be analysed and traffic management plans can be prepared accordingly, the official explains. Public safety announcements will be a part of this project in case of a traffic jam, flooding or any other emergency. “Digital information boards will be installed at major inter-sections across the city and announcement system will be put in place to inform commuters about traffic problems of an area, suggesting them alternative routes,” he says. A citizen-centric android application will also be launched for this purpose.
Green solutions
Not just this. Officials of BSCL say environment sensors will be installed at 10 different places of Bhubaneswar to provide information on the air quality of various localities to the citizens. BOC will analyse these data to work towards improving the air quality of an area. The GPS tracking of vehicles lifting wastes will also be done through this centre, they add.
Fibre magic
All this will be done through sensor-based monitoring. “Fibre cables of 680km length are being laid across the city. It has been proposed to install a large number of close circuit television cameras at important junctions,” says a technocrat working with the BSCL.
Teamwork for mammoth task
Running such ultra-modern facility is not an easy task. According to sources, BSCL has roped in two firms as its technical and programme consulting partners. Honeywell Automation India Limited has been given the contract for installation, operation and maintenance of the facility for a period of nine years, while IBI group has been appointed as a programme management consultant, sources say. At least 30 technical staffers of Honeywell have been engaged to run and maintain the facility. About 20 IBI local consultants and 20 IBI experts are working for monitoring the project. As inter-coordinated services will be provided through BOC, officials from all concerned departments such as civic, health, fire, police and electricity will also be involved. City bus service will also be integrated with it and officials of capital region urban transport will be engaged to ensure smooth service, ahead of hockey world cup in November, the officials add.