KOCHI: With Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram having qualified for the Smart City Mission introduced to retrofit and redevelop Indian cities to global standards, a three-day International conference titled 'TenSymp-2017' got underway here on Friday to evolve suitable schemes and strategies for restructuring the cities. The conference is organised by the Kerala chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the largest professional organisation of engineers in the world, with the support of the Kerala state IT Mission.
Inaugurating the conference, Dr K.T.Jaleel, minister for Local Self-Government said that restructuring our cities to meet global standards, smartness and sustainability was not a challenge that rested solely with the government. “Citizens and organisations have to come forward to define their city’s smartness and enable its successful transformation. The conference is a crucial step in this direction,” the minister said. The minister added that the state government was making active efforts for the inclusion of Kozhikode in the smart city map.
“The need is to fundamentally transform the old system and practices on which our cities worked. We have next-generation technologies at our disposal to bring about change. However, applications and ideas with a ‘smart’ tag is not enough. For the desired results, we need direction, method and coordination for all disruptive innovations. We need to visualize first how we want our smart city to look like and identify our key priorities holistically,” Dr. K.R.Suresh Nair, chairman, IEEE, Kerala chapter, said in his presidential address.
Technologists, scientists and engineers at the conference are examining the adoption of latest technologies and standards for smart cities in the areas of housing, building, education, healthcare, energy management, transportation, water, waste and environment management, governance, security, public safety and disaster preparedness amongst others in four parallel tracks in three days.
