Smart cities are a powerful concept for ensuring improved citizen lifestyles and managing dramatic shifts of population to urban areas. Rapid urbanization is an opportunity to connect citizens with services within a digital ecosystem. This leads to effectively building intelligent cities that are powered by data. However, maintaining such a scale of interconnection and information needs groundbreaking technology. The effective functioning of the smart city relies on a command and control center sitting at the core of all the operations. A city with an integrated command control center (ICCC) at the helm can reduce operational costs and resource usage, besides promoting quality of life and better communication between the government and its citizens.
In this article, we will learn what ICCC is and everything you need to know about its implementation in the government sector.
What is ICCC?
Integrated Command and Control Center (ICCC) is a powerful platform that enables cities to leverage real-time data, drive insights and deliver services. This informed and situational decision-making approach allows the city administrators in moving away from the traditional and inefficient silo-ed departmental approach.
By building a connected ecosystem, ICCCs help the cities in accurately mapping data and services to the requirements of the citizens, while optimizing governance. They significantly optimize the city’s functioning by emphasizing the role of technology.
Below are the key advantages of ICCCs:
- Reduce operational complexity by bringing multiple departments on a single platform
- Improve governance efficiency by enabling intelligence-led decisions
- Better data analysis and sharing to predict and prepare for disasters effectively
An effective Integrated Command and Control Center that is implemented seamlessly has the potential to streamline city functioning sustainably.
How does ICCC work?
ICCC, popularly known as the brain or nerve center of the city, works at an aggregated level processing complex data to enable governance bodies to introduce enhanced policies and planning. Ideally, ICCC constantly collects data from several sensors, applications, and other monitoring devices placed at various locations across the city. The data recorded could be from utilities like water, energy, waste management, and transportation.
After a thorough analysis of this data through data processing and modeling, it generates visualized suggestions and recommendations. This actionable data is used in defining workflows.
In essence, a city-wide network is built through applications and sensors to improve governance in a detailed and measurable manner.
Applications of ICCC
ICCC forms a one-point operational headquarters for the city administration to manage the entire city through the incoming flow of data and visualized analysis. Some of the applications of ICCC are discussed below:
Crisis Management
When a disaster strikes – either city-wide like floods or area-wide like fire mishaps – ICCC will be in a better position to respond. As the center is connected to all the CCTV cameras and similar data points across the city, it gets firsthand and accurate data to act on. It can easily mobilize appropriate personnel to tackle the issue in a comprehensive approach.
For example, during the occurrences of floods, ICCC can issue city-wide alerts asking citizens to avoid a particular region. Using historical data, it can deploy necessary resources across vulnerable regions proactively.
Safeguarding Citizens
One of the primary responsibilities of the civil administration is to protect citizens and make them feel safe. By keeping a track of all the CCTV cameras, police personnel, sensitive areas, and rapid action teams in real-time, the administrators can draw out a comprehensive workflow.
In case of emergencies like riots, epidemics, or forest fires, the cities can access an instant video feed or heat signatures. This data will help in alerting authorities closest to the incident area. The city administrators can also implement timely traffic diversions and safe zone indicators.
Crime Predictions
By analyzing historical and latest crime data, cities can highlight unsafe streets or localities and deploy forces strategically. In addition to accessing real-time video feed from such flagged regions, an automated alert mechanism can be installed. Such that, an action force is dispatched quickly to the location any time a distress call like screaming or gunshots is noticed.
The administrators can also implement smart street lighting management and carry out automated drone surveillance along with mobile patrolling units.
Solid Waste Management
Keeping the city clean involves a consistent process to manage solid wastes by improving cleanliness in public places including public toilet facilities. The cities can mark locations that see high footfall, or places that see high numbers of complaints about garbage and dead animals. Through data analysis, they can design more frequent trips of garbage collection vehicles from such areas.
Tracking footfalls at public toilets can enable the city administrators in optimizing services such as water supply, maintenance, and citizen complaints. By installing sensors at public garbage bins and pickup vehicles, they can generate real-time reports on operational efficiency.
Water Supply Monitoring
From visibility into water levels in reservoirs and dams to assessing the health of the pipeline network, the administrators can assume absolute control of the water supply within the city. By recording the water usage/wastage trends at different nodes, they can effectively ration the supply and redirect the excess supply to localities that are facing water shortages.
It can also help in continuously monitoring water quality right from the storage to the distribution centers through the pipelines. ICCC also helps in managing, mapping, and optimizing trips that water tankers make across the city.
Civic Healthcare Delivery
By collecting and processing data from hospitals across the city, the ICCC can predict any epidemics or pandemics. Further, it enables the city administration to take necessary measures to contain the spread. It also helps in keeping a track of the disbursement of medicines or vaccines through hospitals and on-field medical staff.
The cities can also conduct awareness drives or health campaigns in targeted areas. It can trigger mass communication on preventive healthcare to citizens through email, SMS, and Whatsapp. The governance bodies can further implement mobile medical units by planning regular trips to the regions that are prone to accidents.
Traffic Planning
With complete visibility into traffic volume, peak transit windows and routes, and vehicle types, the city administrators can plan public transport options such as buses or metro trains. They can also coordinate traffic signals right from the center and coordinate the flow of traffic.
The administrators can issue guidelines or recommendations on routes to follow to avoid traffic congestion. The data also helps them predict accident-prone junctions or crossroads and implement mitigation strategies.
Conclusion
The ICCC gives governments and authorities an unprecedented advantage in managing, monitoring, and operating various amenities through real-time data. Although we just mentioned 7 key areas where ICCC adds significant value, there are many other use cases such as service delivery, civic grievances, and environmental challenges among other things.
At PruTech, we design solutions that help governments in streamlining complex data collection, processing, modeling, and visualization to conclude actionable insights. Assisting authorities with intelligence and smart control mechanisms, PruTech’s solutions form a complementary resource.