Expert Speak Young Voices
Published on Sep 16, 2020
The preparation of informative thematic maps and their integration with city portals can enhance public participation and communication.
Smart cities and GIS: Taking it beyond the pandemic

Geographic Information System (GIS), which have been otherwise used in isolation by smart city corporations in India, have proven to be the backbone for cities in their chase of the Covid-19 pandemic. These systems have swiftly metamorphised into the much-needed platforms that enable cities to generate actionable information to respond to the unprecedented emergency situations caused by the novel coronavirus. This was seen in cities across India which used heat mapping and predictive analytics of this data using GIS as guides in delineating buffer zones.

Typically, smart city corporations have ‘Internet of Things’-based applications like ICT-enabled health records, intelligent transport system etc., that enable direct citizen access to city services related to public health, traffic management and governance.

GIS technology helped smart city corporations in real time data analytics, monitoring of remote assets, decision support, and/or presentation elements. The smart city corporations developed the required common environment for visualisation and contextualised data in the form of GIS-enabled dashboards. These dashboards helped authorities to coordinate and do activities like mapping of active cases, home-quarantined people, age- and area-wise analysis of cases, their real time upgradation and the mapping of vulnerable areas. The general mechanism of GIS-enabled analytics and visualisation includes superimposition of the field data on the maps on the dashboards. This way, GIS has helped the smart city corporations to attain the right mix of technology and institutional coordination in response to Covid-19.

These dashboards helped authorities to coordinate and do activities like mapping of active cases, home-quarantined people, age- and area-wise analysis of cases, their real time upgradation and the mapping of vulnerable areas.

To leverage GIS technology in containment, quarantine management and continuity of essentials, almost all the smart city corporations established a Covid-19 War Room, equipped with GIS dashboards. These GIS dashboards track hotspots, positive cases, recovered cases and were further integrated with the respective city-oriented Android, iOS apps. The integration of GIS dashboard and apps enabled end users like citizens and authorities to avail demographic and topographic analysis of cases enabled by GIS maps and tools. Being updated daily, the smart city of Agra has developed dashboard on the IGiS platform — an indigenous technology that pulls GIS, image processing, photogrammetry, and CAD together to link real time data with the GIS maps on dashboard.

The health care dashboard developed by the Pimpri Chinchwad smart city corporation is supplemented with GIS technology and provides location-based information system of geo-tagged home quarantined, containment areas etc. The same information is used by the healthcare department to send special task forces for carrying out door-to-door campaigns and to identify contact cases. To curtail the further spread, this geographical information helps in identification of the areas and determine where clusters can grow, so that these can be made off -limits for healthy population.

The GIS maps were prepared using parameters like demography, topography, land use etc. and integrated with the data analytics.

Bengaluru used GIS data to map Covid-19 cases. By April, it became the first Indian smartcorporation to publish data on new cases daily. The GIS dashboard and city surveillance dashboard both have pan-city reach. The GIS maps were prepared using parameters like demography, topography, land use etc. and integrated with the data analytics.

Interestingly, the GIS technology was used in the process of sanitisation as well, by enabling GIS layers with spraying activity status. This provides real-time inputs to authorities on the areas which are, yet to be sanitised. The GIS maps of the sanitised zones were updated on apps, to make citizens and officials aware of the spread. The Rourkela smart city corporation is using drone-based technique for spraying the disinfectants to prevent unnecessary human activity in containment zones. The drone team uses GIS maps prepared using satellite imagery, along with the visual survey of buildings and terrain. Smart city corporations of Surat, Tiruppur, Salem, Patna have also utilised GIS tools for sanitisation.

The seamless supply of essentials was a major challenge during the lockdown. The smart city corporations administered the delivery of medicines, grocery and cooked food using GIS. The GIS based monitoring of the delivery of these essentials enables mapping of covered and uncovered areas, vendor locations in city. The Agra smart city corporation developed a web-portal to allow the citizens to select the nearest available vendors along with their contact details for availing daily needs. As these details were collected during the GIS property survey previously itself, there was no delay in the set-up of this system.

The seamless supply of essentials was a major challenge during the lockdown.

Raipur smart city corporation, with a mission that no one sleeps empty stomach in the city, established a GIS enabled war room, helpline and distribution centers to provide the cooked food to the needy and the urban poor. The distribution centers were geo-tagged, mapped using GIS and integrated on the dashboard as well as the app. In Chennai and Bhubaneshwar, the spatial analysis done using GIS helped in home delivery of medicines. The information about the areas uncovered by the delivery system is conveyed to the respective zonal officers for necessary redressal of grievances.

All these examples highlight that tools associated with GIS can be utilised in routine planning, management and administration of city level issues, and can become permanent in nature. Applications of GIS such as network analysis can be used to prepare city sanitation plans, and laying water and drainage network. The GIS-based origin-destination analysis can enable integrated traffic management systems (ITMS) to help in avoiding traffic jams and in supply chain management of essential goods and services, and even to provide opportunities to a larger number of local entrepreneurs. The preparation of informative thematic maps and their integration with city portals can enhance the public participation and communication. The pandemic has exposed many lacunae in city planning but it also highlighted the capability of GIS in damage prevention and control, which could be formalised in the system.


The author is a research intern at ORF.
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