Creating Pandemic Ready Smart Cities: Lessons from 2020

The outbreak of the global pandemic COVID-19 has brought to the world some great shifts. A lot of these shifts once seemed a great challenge to overcome, and in the next few months, it is going to be the new normal. This outbreak is a clear indication that change is the unsaid rule of nature.  

If we just turn a century back, life then would seem difficult and complicated. With the advancements in the digital age we are in today, the pace of change has scored up the complex. 

The thorough changes in our daily routine have summoned us to consider approaches to manufacture a progressively practical society, the one that will have the option to withstand the fast development of our environmental factors. With the world struggling with so many problems, one thing that is most wanted out of it is a safe place to live in. 

The idea of Smart Cities that was conceived years back but the last six months have seen its need to an extreme level. It has become one of the most talked-about ventures of the recent days. The model of the venture is highly influenced by one topography then onto the next, contingent upon different political, social, and financial components. Regardless of whether the current brilliant city model is sufficiently deft to deal with a pandemic like a circumstance, is the issue that presently emerges. 

Smart City in the Era of the COVID-19

Conditions evoked by the COVID-19 pandemic have required an update of the very meaning of a so discussed “Smart City.” We have to keep in mind that savvy urban areas, with all the emphasis on digitisation, are yet as powerless against referred situations as obscure rural areas. 

An exhaustive and detailed plan of the city’s nooks and corners of dangers is required to assess a city’s preparation and readiness despite the emergency. Starting now, the fiasco recuperation projects of the Smart City plans basically centre just around referred to characteristic disasters, for example, quakes, volcanic eruptions, tropical storm, tidal wave, etc. Be that as it may, even with our readiness to handle any sort of natural disaster event in a smart city model, we are sadly failing miserably in our readiness against the sudden breakout of epidemics and pandemics, for example, COVID-19. 

If thought in a positive way, the pandemic has given another point of view to the manner in which we plan our foundation. We have to draw learnings from this continual circumstance and apply those to situations on the ground to manufacture successful and long haul arrangements. The case presently lays on our ability to reexamine and refine our Smart City models to suit for a questionable circumstance, as we face today. 

Why not redesign our smart city model to “Pandemic Prepared Smart City?” The new system will improve our disaster recovery projects and help make independent urban communities that can withstand a total lockdown. The Pandemic Prepared Smart City outlines must think about the accompanying approaches to manage a dubious circumstance: 

Contactless Delivery of Products and Food Items

A compelling method to deliver orders without direct human contact. A thing that developed out of the COVID-19 emergency, and is relied upon to remain for quite a while to come. Automatons, for example, can be utilized to set up contactless request pickup and drops. 

Modified Supply Chain Setup

Trigger progressively industrial dependence to decrease reliance on labour, by initiating substitute methods of outbound coordination, and by expanding visibility on inbound supplies. 

No Contact Inspection of Patients

 Fighting with the pandemic requires clinical assistance with social distancing. Creating contact-free offices at nearby facilities, along with the current online conference applications, can help accomplish the goal. The information these frameworks catch on basic wellbeing markers can encourage prescient suggestions, for example, home isolate, seclusion, or admission to the close by First Response Hospital.

Wireless Review of Municipal Infringement 

With the developing requirement for social distancing, reconnaissance techniques for lawfulness upkeep likewise need to advance. Keeping an eye on a traffic signal, for example, is a test in the present occasions and furthermore places experts in harm’s way. Initiating ‘pandemic automatons’ across high-chance territories to screen infringement of municipal standards, for example, social-removing can end up being compelling.

Handling Cybercriminals and Hoax News 

Now like never before, we comprehend the dangers of fake news. We need to use innovation to handle the issue on the off chance that we need to stifle it successfully. While there are a couple of new-age organizations that are making a splendid showing of actuality checking, a focal vault of authentic data will naturally help control the hazard of untrustworthy news. 

Online Training and Assessment Framework 

The COVID-19 lockdown has given us that one can be found anyplace in this world and still be beneficial. The learning can be applied for our instruction framework moreover. Setting up a technical framework for schools and colleges should turn into a lasting tool in the New Smart City model, so as to encourage e-learning and e-assessments. 

Contact Free Sanitation and Waste Management 

Make arrangements to put resources into contact-free sterile cleanliness receptacles and garbage removal innovation to diminish disease, and to keep up significant levels of tidiness during lockdown circumstances. 

Blockchain-Empowered Resident Following Framework 

Till now, tracking the development of individuals contaminated by COVID-19, or the expected transporters, has been a dull illicit relationship. Increasing an unmistakable perceivability on the testing framework has been the greatest test. A decentralized Blockchain system to follow individuals’ development, wellbeing records, and so on., can give helpful experiences in such circumstances. 

E-Voting Infrastructure 

For long, we have been requesting a web-based democratic framework to suit the fast development of residents starting with one state then onto the next, or even outside the nation. The New Smart City model can’t disregard the need. The new model must address the provision by building up a compelling backend framework to guarantee no duplication or control happens in votes cast on the web. 

Smart Consideration Units and Confinement Wards 

Hospitals assume a significant job in giving the principal reaction to an emergency circumstance. The pandemic-prepared keen City model should organize fundamental clinical consideration with the utilization of innovation. The model must upgrade the availability of wellbeing offices by expanding bed limit, ventilator frameworks, and detachment wards in addition to other things, to assist clinics with dealing with quickly expanding administration requests.

Wrapping Up the Whole Story

While making a pandemic prepared model, in view of the learnings we have assembled, will suit the plenty of changes we are seeing today. Be that as it may, the most basic perspective to remember is dexterity and adaptability. On the off chance that the redesigned brilliant City models are in a state of harmony with the present occasions, yet neglect to adjust to new circumstances, the whole exertion will even now crash and burn.

— Scarlett is a technical content writer and is associated with it consulting for over a couple of years.

Also, Read Best opinions about IOT Based Smart Cities