TM Vinod Kumar Editor

Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements T.M. Vinod Kumar Editor E-Governance for Smart Cities Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements Series editor Bharat Dahiya, Bangkok, Thailand More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13196 T.M. Vinod Kumar Editor E-Governance for Smart Cities 1 3 Editor T.M. Vinod Kumar School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi (SPA-D) Calicut, Kerala India ISSN 2198-2546 ISSN 2198-2554 (electronic) Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements ISBN 978-981-287-286-9 ISBN 978-981-287-287-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-287-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2014956645 Springer Singapore Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2015 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper Springer Science+Business Media Singapore Pte Ltd. is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Foreword I Around the world there are about 3.5 billion people living in cities, but their areal extension covers only 2 % of the Earth’s land surface. This indicates that a large number of people live in a small area, resulting in overcrowding. In such a situ- ation, the challenge lies in the management of safety and facilitation of needs for people to live comfortably. Towards this direction, there is continuous improvement in transportation, energy distribution, construction, technology development, provision of facilities and utilities. In recent years, the negative impacts of rapid urbanization are recognized, as many problems are being faced by cities. For example, traffic congestion, poor services of facilities, high cost of housing, etc. The good news is that due to advancement and innovation in technology, espe- cially Information Technology (IT), it is not difficult to manage cities. However, one needs to be smart in the application of IT for people. Such smart application of new technology for better living for people in cities is ‘smart cities’. Smart cities are well planned with innovations and knowledge that develop extraordinary capabilities. They work all the time, i.e. 24 h and 7 days a week. Such a facility makes city citizens to live and enjoy in a satisfactory way of life with easy public services, comfortable mobility, conserving energy, clean environment and better utilization of natural resources. It helps to withstand even hardships due to natural calamities, including economic downturns. The key concern here is governance. This is because, even with all the facilities available in cities, if governance is bad, then smart cities are of no use. Thus good governance is of utmost importance. To achieve good governance, the smart way is to follow e-governance. E-governance or electronic governance implies the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for all services and facilities for easy operation and management. Day by day, with more and more innovations and new technological development, there is continuous improvement in operations and maintenance of facilities. In such a scenario, developed countries are quick to implement the new technology for betterment of the people, while developing and underdeveloped countries are slow and far behind. The time has come now to make all the cities of the world to be smart cities, which makes the people in cities live more comfortably. v vi Foreword I Thus, this book on E-governance of smart cities is timely and is a must read for all decision-makers and practitioners to follow. The present volume is a land- mark among other books of similar nature as it covers all the important elements of smart cities. Earlier series of similar nature from the same editor, Sri Vinod Kumar, on—“Geographic Information System for Smart Cities”—with 23 inter- national authors have already been published. This book forms part of a series of “Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements”, which Springer will be pub- lishing soon. The chapters in the book are written by eminent personalities and contains mainly four parts: Part I is on E-Smart City Governance-State of the Art Studies, Part II on E-Smart City Governance-Domain Studies, Part III on E-Smart City Governance- Tools and Issues, and Part IV on E-Smart City Governance- Futures. Surprisingly, only three Indian cities—Hyderabad, Bangalore and Jaipur—are listed among the 8,000 identified smart cities in the world by the Intelligent Community Organisation recently. This indicates that much more needs to be done in other cities of India in a smart way. In fact, the Government of India has already planned to come out with 100 smart cities soon. The concept of e-governance for cities is a continuous process that improves every year with new ideas and philosophies with local cultural values. The arti- cles written by eminent scholars in this book, I am sure can be transmitted to the younger generation to enrich the world of knowledge. August 2014 T. Harinarayana Foreword II There is a new type of convergence that is slowly happening; a convergence of ideas, issues and action with speed and efficiency. There are many reasons for this, of which three factors contribute critically. They are individual empowerment, efficient and quick use and access to resources and processes, and lastly records and documentation to be transparently generated for such initiatives. Welcome to the world of Smart cities; Involving Smart people, Smart processes and Smart gadgets to begin with. It is in this context that this book by Prof. Vinod Kumar and group can be seen. There is both an urgent need and efficient process that will ‘liberate’ common citizens and protect our environment and climate from reaching catastrophic levels and at the same time provide for efficient governance. One clear way ahead is the ‘Smart Way’. Despite the increased automation and ICT deployed worldwide in the last decade relating to issues of governance, it is still way below what can and needs to be done. Almost everywhere, governance is failing, and this is not lim- ited to poor or developing countries. Recent examples from the Middle East and Europe endorse this. Thus the ‘Smart’ approach to various concerns that directly and indirectly affect citizens is to be looked at in a positive way. Also, given the fact that urbanization is a global phenomenon, it makes sense to address this at the city level, which also has a positive spillover effect on making things easy at the remote and rural level due to increased quality and efficiency of governance in the city. Keeping these issues in mind the team of authors under Prof. Vinod Kumar have come up with a well-researched book that addresses a wide range of issues in various domains. It is essential to remark that currently, even the best practices of governance are neither efficient in terms of resource use (water, electricity, etc.) nor in terms of capital. Thus a better e-governance approach is much wanted uni- versally, more so at urban levels. A city like Bengaluru in Karnataka, India, con- sumes almost 75 % of all resources for just 20 % of the state population, creating great inequity and inefficiency in resource use with the remaining population. Perhaps New Delhi could be worse, which only motivates one to initiate Smart approaches to E-Governance to urban issue management everywhere. vii viii Foreword II It is my privilege to write the foreword to this book. The book is timely and covers topics that can be termed “For Urgent” consideration. I am confident this book will be valuable to academicians, researchers, NGOs, administrators and urban planners. I look forward to the wide use and feedback on this book. Mysore, July 2014 Ashok Rao Preface At a time when 100 new smart cities seem to have captured the attention of the nation, it becomes all the more important to have a close look at where our existing cities stand with regard to e-governance and how they are moving in the direction of becoming smart cities. Smart city as seen here is an integrated urban system of Smart Urban Economy, Smart People, Smart Governance, Smart Mobility, Smart Environment and Smart Living. One of the 23 reforms which form part of the reform agenda of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) was the introduction of a system of e-governance using IT applications like GIS and MIS for various services provided by Urban Local Bodies (ULBs)/para statals. All the 65 mission cities and all the small towns that obtained projects approved under the UIG or UIDSSMT component of the Mission had to undertake implementation of this reform as well during the 7-year mission period of 2005–2012, subsequently extended by two more years.

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