For example, one should not attempt to either shape or evaluate the Smart Cities Mission using metrics that one could use for AMRUT, PMAY or the Swachh Bharat Mission.
If one attempts to measure "intelligence" using metrics like the number of integrated command and control centres made, or the ridiculously high figure of lakhs or crores spent on the 5858 smart city projects or that other wholly irrelevant variable - numbers of place-making projects implemented - then one may totally lose ones way and end up with a complete hotch-potch of things where anything and everything could be described as a smart city.
Perhaps, this is exactly what made the present minister, former seasoned diplomat and articulate speaker, appear rather at a loss for words while describing the achievements of the Smart Cities Mission at the National Urban Planning Conclave in July this year. You can listen to him here.
The fact that while talking about the command and control centres he could only mention their role as war rooms during covid says a lot about the lack of clarity regarding one of the most significant components of the Smart Cities Mission. Yet, it is precisely the points that he mentioned and the manner in which he mentioned that reveal what is fundamentally problematic in the conceptualisation of the Smart Cities Mission.
Not a separate mission...but the brain linking all missions
To see the Smart Cities Mission as a distinct mission itself seems to be an erroneous approach. Instead of trying to create a green-field "smart city" or develop parts within the city as area based development zones or initiate a random traffic signaling project here or a place making project there, the smart cities mission should be about being the "brain" that links, coordinates and charts out the path for all the various urban missions and activities being undertaken in a particular city. It should be the "intelligence" that guides the actions of all the on-going and future missions.
Seen in this way, there would be no need to justify the achievements of the mission by quoting figures for numbers of smart parks developed or the expenditure incurred in the construction a super-duper integrated command and control centre building.
Unfortunately, the work of being the brain is precisely what the smart cities mission has not been able to do. In order to do that one needs the freedom to adopt a way of thinking that focuses on how things are being implemented rather than explicitly focus on what is being implemented -- on effectiveness and functionality rather than appearing cool and spewing buzzwords.
One has to somehow initiate a "capacity building" programme for the very politicians, government officials and private sector consultants who are engaged with the smart cities mission....for, I hate to say it, but they really don't seem to have a clue when it comes to the science of creating intelligent systems capable of tackling complexity and uncertainty.
The fact that the mission is often under vigorous criticism from a bunch of even more clueless social and political scientists, journalists and activists is another reason for its inability to correct its course. This crowd is even more difficult to handle because its members are not only comfortably ignorant of the fact that they are completely ignorant but also pretty smug in their confidence that their critique is spot on.
What Smart systems are like
In my early days of exploring the smart cities mission I often came across this trivia that the concept of smart cities has its roots in some products and systems developed by the IBM company.
Well, if that is so, then how do we explain the following lines written in 1965 ?
"Planning is not centrally concerned with the design of the artefacts, but with a continuing process that begins with the identification of social goals and the attempt to realise these through the guidance of change in the environment. At all times the system will be monitoring to show the effects of recent decisions and how these relate to the course being steered. This process may be compared to that encountered in the control mechanisms of living organisms, part of the subject matter of cybernetics."
- J.B. Mcloughlin
The highlighted line in the passage is precisely the task that the integrated command and control centres should be performing. And as Mcloughlin righly points out, the roots of such a continuous and dynamic style of planning (which strongly resembles a Smart City approach) lie in the fields of cybernetics and operations research.
How can a system develop a kind of "intelligence" where it can take decisions and optimise its course by continuously receiving feedback from a variety of sensors. The principle of automatic control is built into such an approach. At its most basic it could be something as simple and effective as a water tank with a floating valve stopper that stops the flow of water into to the tank when the water reaches a certain level and then resumes it again when it falls below that level.
And at a large and advanced level it could be something like this -
This is a diagram of an interconnected power generating system. The components comprising the system and shown in the diagram were described by the author A.A. Voronov as follows -
"A few hydroelectric stations (A) and the thermal stations (B) tied into a ring network operating on a common constant load (C) under direct digital control from a control room (D) common for all the utilities."
- A.A. Voronov, "Specific Features Involved in the Development of Large Automatic Control Systems"
The component (D) highlighted by me in the line above and shown as "Supervising Computer" in the diagram IS an Integrated Command and Control Centre.
It is not about what kind of building it is located in, but the function that it performs that is important.
And what is that function ? Voronov explains it as follows -
"Depending on weather conditions the amount of water collected and stored in the station reservoirs can vary significantly. At a low water level the hydroelectric stations should cut their daily discharge from the reservoirs so as to conserve the accumulated water. To compensate the reduced capacity of the water stations the network has to increase the amount of fuel burnt in the thermal units, which implies increased requirements for railway transportation delivering this fuel. Conversely, with high water levels in the reservoirs, the requirements for railway transportation are reduced accordingly.
The algorithm computing these optimal powers is implemented on the supervising computer of the system. From the general incoming information visualised on the display the operator may adjust the algorithm to take into account the changing external conditions of the system such as fuel characteristics, flooding terms, and so on."
The network described above coordinates varying hydrological conditions; power generation and freight transportation through necessary algorithms working through the integrated command and control centre.
Does anything more need to said to explain what a smart and intelligent system should be doing ?
And by the way, this example is from a book published 40 years ago !
When one starts to understand what such systems are really about and for how long they have been around then one can start going a little deeper than be preoccupied with scientifically profound concerns such as terminators enslaving humanity.
Consider the following observation by the remarkable Soviet mathematician Elena S. Wentzel -
"Even with totally automatic systems of control which seem to make decisions with no human interference, the judgement of a human is always present in the form of the algorithm employed by the system.
The functions of the human are not taken up by a machine, rather, they shift from a basic level to a more intelligent level. To add more weight to the argument, some automatic control systems are developed so that the human may actively interact to aid the process of control."
- Elena S. Wentzel, "Operations Research: A Methodological Approach"
And by the way, the above lines are from a book published 43 years ago !
As I have discussed earlier, the tremendous increase in the processing power of computers, the growth of GNU/Linux and the free and open-source software (FOSS) movement and the availability of open data allow us to develop such systems on our own laptops and desktops. All it requires is the courage and the willingness to learn things that are important for our work but are, as yet, unfamiliar to us.
It is always more liberating to learn and do, than having to pretend and defend.
In the forthcoming blogs we will continue to look at how such systems can be developed to tackle complex real world problems, using the resources that are readily available to us.
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