ICT Applications to achieve Green Growth in Indian Cities (Phase II)

Project Summary:

The grant aims to inform the development of tools and best practices for smart city solutions that will lead to efficient, resilient, and competitive urban environments. 

Real time data can transform transportation and energy use decisions for cities and citizens. This phase two grant builds on the implementation and analysis of three pilot projects that identify ICT solutions for sustainability across energy, water, urban, and transportation sectors. Phase two curates a service platform that is pre-loaded with relevant ICT applications for cities. The prototype will be piloted, and when proven successful, offered across the region.  

Grant participants including local governments and stakeholders will collaborate with World Bank projects and lending efforts, and with Korean experts to create the Korea-South Asia Region Smart Cities Innovation Network. Participants from at least 100 cities or organizations will be provided with the tools and best practices leading toward more efficient, resilient, and competitive urban environments.

Outcomes:

Output 1:

• Dissemination of lessons learned from other similar projects worldwide

Output 2:

• Development of base for potential pilots through the data collection, quantitative and qualitative data

Output 3:

• Indicators based on studies results

Output 4:

• Identified objectives, timelines and responsible entities for pilots demonstration

Outcomes:

Four areas have been considered where ICT applications could possibly be leveraged to lessen the serious environmental challenges listed above. However, the areas outlined below are provided as examples only for potential initiatives; an essential part of this project will be conducting feasibility studies in each particular area. These assessments will eventually reveal the real possibilities and detailed costs for potential demonstrative pilots that might potentially be undertaken. The preliminary areas for feasibility studies are identified as follows:

1. Greening the ICT for government infrastructure. The outcome of this initiative will be materialized in cost-effective and eco-friendly data centers that will allow governments to offer flexible and non-stop services to users through effective resource allocation. Additionally, energy optimization for all existing data centers could also be high priority as that alone could help reduce energy consumption by at least 5-10%. A major priority of this initiative will be to develop a systematic approach for retiring ICT equipment.
2. Smart Water Management. This initiative aims to improve operational efficiency through applying monitoring and management technologies in order to operate end-to-end distribution, from reservoirs to pumping stations to smart pipes to intelligent metering at the user site. The deployment of intelligent metering at the user site is likely to produce behavioral changes through incentivizing households to moderate their water consumption. The pilot ICT project might involve replacing conventional electric meters with smart meters and upgrading the water system where it can be monitored and managed remotely.
3. Smart Grid Infrastructure Adoption. This initiative aims to improve the electric grid performance to reduce electricity loss during T&D, accommodate the large-scale introduction of renewable energy, and involve customers through smart metering. It seeks to promote energy conservation by changing resident awareness of energy use through distributing intelligent home electricity controllers which display the amount of power consumption.
4. ICT applications for urban administration. This initiative aims to transform and improve the city as a system by deploying smart technologies to create new, intelligent ways of making cities more resource efficient and reduce their carbon footprint. The following two components will be considered as part of this larger initiative: