Right firms get Smart

Visakhapatnam: Delegates of the United States Trade Development Agency feel organisations with right solution should be awarded Smart City projects. Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, Mr Nirav Shah, an Indian-American delegate with the US team, said non-transparency in the bidding process might affect the relationship between India and USA in the long run and the projects as well.

“The Smart City projects would lead to massive business opportunities as billions would be pumped into it not only by the government but also private players. The other reason why many businessmen would show interest in Vizag City is that Andhra Pradesh is known as a place where it is easy to do business," said Mr Shah, who is also president of El Technologies LLC, a geographical information system consulting firm.

As the government has decided to first take up projects to make the city disaster resilient under the Smart City plan, one of the important things should be to to integrate all the government departments through a common operating system using GIS technologies, he said.

“This would ensure that faster help of a relevant nature is sent to citizens in case of any emergency or natural disaster,” he said, adding that his company had provided such services to many government and private agencies and completed about 450 projects so far. “The common server should have details like hospital bed capacity, the hospital close to a specific place, details of the location of the hydrant and water pressure to be set to douse any fires in an emergency. Such readily available data would help the administration take quick decisions,” Mr Shah said.