Location is at the core of a smart city project. With cities wrangling with issues like lack of affordable housing, traffic congestion, air pollution, and ageing population, location technology and 3D printing can help in improving the quality of the city.
At the session on Location and 3D printing for smart cities, at GeoSmart India 2019, the importance of these technologies for developing and maintaining smart cities was discussed. Location powers mapping and enable all stakeholders to gain insight.
“There is need to make maps intelligent for decision-making. The next step then is moving to geomatics. Technological interconnectivity exists, but it is in silos, which is a drawback.” says Deven Lehru, President- Business Development, Scanpoint Geomatics .
Over time, a lot of accumulated data may lose its relevance, so there is a need of a uniform approach and integrating the silos.
“A truly holistic approach which includes data sets that get updated and easily retrieved is essential. And preventing data monopolization should also be prioritized,” he further adds.
Whatever infrastructure is being developed should be robust and resilient, and people who are not spatially savvy should be able to understand it pretty well. A common citizen portal that has all the vital details is the way ahead.
3D printing converts digital simulation into a physical object. It has two main advantages: optimum storage allocation and increased efficiency. Also, labour required and waste generated is significantly reduced.
“Use of 3D printing is increasing in smart cities. Smartness of a city depends on interconnectivity and no one system can solve all smart city problems. Modifying/ identifying cross section is important as multiple pieces are joint together”, says Rajat Mehta, 3D Printing and Digital Manufacturing Country Manager, HP India.
Enormous volume of data is generated in a smart city and it’s crucial to make sense out of location data and be able to program AI that is obtained from customers in the database.
“What we have is that clients can know whether addresses, geo locations are correct or not. There are three different buildings in a location/ area, there is need to plan our facilities”, says Abhishek Prabhuda, Client Delivery Head, Delhivery.
