Smart Cities are about Smart Citizenry: Dr. Jonathan Margolis, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, US Department of State
Reflecting on the moniker “New Weather Enterprise”, Dr. Laxman Singh Rathore, Director General of Meteorology and Permanent Representative of India with WMO, underscored the need for out-of-the-box thinking in delivering meteorological information to enhance productivity of life and management of natural resources. Mr. Rathore was speaking at the India-US Technology Sumit which is being organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and the U.S. Department of State. Two sessions were held deliberating the role of technology in weather forecasting - “The New Weather Enterprise” and shaping smart cities - “Linking Earth Science to Smarter Cities” as part of the two-day program currently underway.
Mr. Rathore said that the very way weather forecasting and information dissemination has been done so far must now change. “A culture of intelligent automation is being triggered to manage and analyze huge amounts of data to customize an information product and deliver to the end user,” he said, urging industry to pick up the pace of mobile-based app development. Highlighting tremendous potential in health, water and disaster management, he cited successful examples in the agriculture sector, where public and private players have come together to deliver information through Kissan call centers, mobile phones and web links. He also deliberated whether innovative models like regional centers for continents could be conceived at the global level in improving local forecasting.
Dr. Hendrick Tolman, Acting Director, National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) picked up on multi-sector collaboration and emphasized that clear separation of responsibilities was the key to successful partnerships between government, industry, academia and others. Referring to “protection of people and property” as the fundamental principle, he called for resilient, adaptable and integrated institutions in smart cities to minimize the time lag between data analysis, dissemination and actionable decision-making. He recalled the devastating Katrina hurricane in New Orleans when climatic information was made available in advance but local officials had taken 36-48 hours before the evacuation of the city actually began.
Noble laureate Betsy Weatherhead, Senior Scientist, University of Colorado highlighted Boulder as one of the smartest cities in the US, and mentioned that through advanced weather systems and understanding of Earth sciences, one can manage resources much better. “Energy, food and water are going to be the three most significant challenges for the future”, she said. Referring to a smart city as one that provides a high quality of life with respect to these challenges, she added, “When we care about the environment, it ends up being good for the people in that city.” She also expressed a counter-opinion that the roles of government, private and academia cannot be set in stone. Rather, they must evolve through continued dialogue.
In the panel discussion on linking Earth Science to Smarter Cities, Dr. Jonathan Margolis, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES), US Department of State drew attention the gravity of the situation stating the fact that 1 million people per week are moving to cities – which means that governments and societies around the world will have to provide water, food, energy, sanitation, transport, health, disaster management for the urban population in a context of providing jobs and economic security. While technology is certainly the cornerstone of making cities sustainable and increase the quality of life for its citizens, it cannot be accomplished without “smart” people. “Smart cities are about smart citizenry,” he said, adding that this social and cultural component of familiarity with technology would be imperative to converting data into actionable knowledge.
New trends are also emerging in terms of demand in the context of weather forecasting. Jaya Singh, Chief Executive Officer, BK Weather Sys alluded to increasing demand for weather services, a $6 billion industry, across sectors such as tourism, events, agriculture, energy and others. In the context of integrating weather and earth data to smart city development, Sujaya Rathi, Principal Research Scientist, Center for Study of Science, technology and Policy (STEP) suggested that whenever, wherever smart cities are being built with those parameters, their master plans and data must be stored somewhere so that one can learn from best practices.
However, for such comprehensive and multi-layered weather modeling data to become available and usable, technology has a huge role to play. For instance, studying flood modelling not only has components of weather models but also typography, geology, drainage systems and other factors. Yogish Sabharwal, Senior Researcher, High Performance Computing IBM Research labs suggests that the Cloud would be the perfect platform for everyone to come together. “Push data and models on to the cloud and make it available for everyone’s benefit – whether free or through pay as you go models,” he said. Dr. Akhilesh Gupta, President of the Indian Meteorological Society (IMS) agreed with the suggestion and informed that the Government is working on a National Supercomputing Mission, for which one of the objectives is to build a Cloud platform.
Karuna Gopal, President, Foundation for Futuristic Cities built the case for India-US collaboration in technology outlining huge potential in big data analytics. She said that in this two-way give and take, India could offer talent and a testing ground for big data analytics, while the US could offer learning and development in the context of homeland security especially through its crowdsourcing protocol. “The U.S. is moving very fast from data to knowledge to action,” she said. She further added that India could learn from the federal, state and city government level data-sharing platforms that the US has developed through its fusion centers. She also referred to the area of health, stating that India and U.S. resonate to the same medical needs and lifestyle issues. Predictive and preventive healthcare through big data analytics could lessen the disease burden.
Greater Noida
November 18, 2014