Dr. Chandan Chowdhury, Managing Director-India, DassaultSystemes, India shares his comments below:
“The world’s urban population is expanding rapidly and while in India we are still in early stages of urbanisation compared to other parts of the world but over the next decade, keeping in line with global trends, India is likely to witness a massive rise in its urban populations and it is imperative that we develop a proactive strategy to manage this urban explosion.
Cities, if developed strategically, contribute extensively to the economic growth of the nation. However, if urban growth is unchecked and unplanned, it could lead to massive energy and water consumption and wastage, and growing carbon emissions. Already, cities release nearly 80% of the world’s carbon emissions, city buildings consume a third of the world’s energy supply and almost 50% of city water goes to waste because of leakages and inefficient planning. Other challenges these developing urban areas face are ever increasing transport demands, insufficient road space for public transport and pedestrians, depleted ground water resources, dying fresh-water bodies, unplanned and unauthorised colonies, citizen safety, inadequate and unplanned housing, growing unemployment, municipal waste disposal and management, insufficient healthcare, poor disaster management planning etc.
The launch of ‘Smart City’, ‘Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation and ‘Housing for All by 2022’ three flagship programmes of the government is a welcome move. Building these 100 Smart cities will require considerable system integration, simplification and standardisation of geo data which will be key enablers of building projects across India. 3D mapping applications, modern architecture, urban planners, power generators will all help leverage technology to deliver ‘more’ using ‘less’ and create a sustainable city that improves the life of citizens. We look forward to working in collaboration with the government to build 3D models of smart cities through our application called ‘3DEXPERINCity’. 3DEXPERIENCity, a virtual platform for Smart City aims at federating all initiatives of sustainable and efficient availability of key resources such as energy, water, transport, urban infrastructure, education and healthcare for the benefit of the citizens.”
