Monitoring worst-hit districts: Smart City war rooms for affected areas

The Union government has discovered a new use for the Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCCs) designed for the Smart Cities Mission -- surveillance and monitoring of Covid-19 affected districts across the country.

According to government officials familiar with the matter who asked not to be named, these centres have been converted into war rooms for real-time data monitoring and to provide the latest information through a central dashboard. Their mandate is to track suspected cases, monitor people under quarantine, and keep an eye on clusters and containment zones.

The Smart Cities Mission was launched in 2015 to modernise 100 cities by 2020. Under the mission, setting up of integrated command and control centres (ICCC) for each city is a vital step. The ICCCs are designed to enable monitoring of amenities and utilities in real-time.

States with a high number of Covid-19 cases such as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan are using these centres for CCTV surveillance of public places, geographic information system (GIS)mapping of Covid-19-hit areas, and GPS tracking of health care workers.

“The Centre is coordinating with the states through our central command centre at Nirman Bhawan in New Delhi,” a government official said on condition of anonymity.

Nirmal Bhawan houses the offices of the urban development ministry which oversees the smart city initiative. The official added that the states are also using the centres for predictive analytics .”We are also doing real-time tracking of ambulances and disinfection services.”

In every city with such a network, the Centre has found that it is a good way to collaborate with the district administration and city administration.

States are also using the system for providing virtual training to doctors and health care professionals as well as medical services through video conferencing. “Leveraging technology, the smart cities are collaborating with medical practitioners... to provide online medical consultations to citizens.”

In Maharashtra, the Pune Smart City Development Corporation Limited (PSCDCL) has collaborated with the Pune Municipal Corporation to develop an integrated Covid-19 data dashboard. “Each [Covid-19] case in the city has been mapped using geospatial information systems and the city administration is monitoring the [affected] areas and creating buffer zones,” said a second official familiar with the mater who too did not wish to be named.

Using heat-mapping technologies and predictive analytics, the city administration is developing a containment plan , with the containment zones get reflected on the dashboard.

Smart City dashboards also monitor quarantine facilities and tracks the health of patients and their contacts placed under home quarantine.

Tamil Nadu has deployed teams of doctors at its Smart City centre to monitor people under quarantine. “In Chennai, 25 doctors are engaged in the ICCC. They have been assigned 250 people in quarantine each ...,” the second official said.

In Uttar Pradesh, the command centres are being used for tracking the delivery of health services across the state. The ICCC is being used as a helpline and tele-counselling centre for citizens. Medical officers are stationed at ICCCs in different shifts to assist during any situation.

“ In centres like Kanpur Smart City, Aligarh, Varanasi, etc., health services are being tracked from the ICCC. Telemedicine is offered through the video conferencing facility launched by the city administrations. In Aligarh, doctors are deployed at Aligarh Smart City ICCC from 11am to 8 pm to enable telemedicine and video conferencing facility through a dedicated Whatsapp number,” the official said.

“Smart cities were designed with inbuilt emergency healthcare support in the modules. The command centres have been designed keeping emergency scenarios and that can be used with some customisation for battling Covid-19. Features of the command centres including data analytics and artificial intelligence can be leveraged with additional pandemic data from the health ministry. It already has a multi-layered GIS map of various districts and wards ready which can be used to zero down on specific localities,” said Arindam Guha, partner and lead government and public sector, Deloitte India.