Smart City faces bigger challenges to stay on top

BHUBANESWAR:The only Indian city to find place in top-20 smart cities of the world by a global study, Bhubaneswar is down at the bottom in healthcare, productivity and mobility parameters.The study by UK-based digital market research and consulting agency, Juniper Research, evaluated mobility, healthcare, public safety and productivity between July and September 2017.

The ‘Global Smart City Performance Index 2017,’ intrestingly, rates Bhubaneswar along with global   cities like Singapore, San Francisco, London, New York, Barcelona, Berlin, Chicago, Portland, Tokyo, Melbourne, San Diego, Seoul, Nice, Dubai, Mexico City, Wuxi, Rio de Janeiro, Yinchuan and Hangzhou.
Singapore tops the list in the Intel-sponsored study, while Bhubaneswar is ranked 13th in public safety indicator and 20th in mobility, healthcare and productivity indexes.

In healthcare index, Bhubaneswar is among three cities which suffer from very poor air quality levels with proven negative impact on citizens’ health.Bhubaneswar is not rated highly for the low levels of hospital bed availability, which could be improved by increasing citizens’ level of access to digital services as well as wider roll-outs of tele-health and local connected clinics, the study said.

Along with Yinchuan and Hangzhou, Bhubaneswar is yet to address wider productivity challenges.
None of these cities has, as yet, encouraged development of solutions from a bottom-up level, with most innovation driven from the top-down. The study suggested that the cities should address inequalities present in digital services access.

Similarly, Bhubaneswar was found to be trailing in addressing urban transportation services.
However, Bhubaneswar fared well in terms of public safety which is attributed to innovative models adopted for safety of citizens.