Concept Note
Special Centre for Disaster Research at Jawaharlal Nehru University
Organizes an
International Conference on
Disaster Resilient Smart Cities
4-6 December, 2019
Revisiting the Smart City Discourse for Disaster Preparedness:
A global discourse on ‘Smart Cities’ is gripping research institutions, universities and
international funding organizations since the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra
Modi launched India’s 100 smart cities mission, with a vision to promote cities, which will
provide core infrastructure, sustainable environment application of smart solutions on
25th June 2015. The governance of the world expects to overcome many shortcomings of public
service delivery, citizen safety, energy requirements, traffic jams, health scares and concerns
of infrastructural designs. The concept carries different yardsticks to the policy makers of
different countries. However, a near agreement on a definitional frontier identifies four pillars
of comprehensive development, ie; institutional, physical, social and economic infrastructure.
There is no clear mention of the fact that a really meaningful smart city is a city which is free
of disasters or is prepared in advance to address disasters such as fire, floods, hurricanes,
tornadoes, landslides, bomb blasts, nuclear accidents, epidemics and animal population
management. Institutions which respond to these alerts are trained, use sophisticated
appropriate technology, respond with speed and sensitive to the value of human and non-human
life in the city.
Facts are clear on the report that cities would be the greatest centre of concern across the world
by 2020 as more than 70% of its population would be inhabiting urban areas. This number had
already crossed 50% or 3.3 billion by 2008 and is projected to explode to 5 billion by 2030.
Since this is happening much faster than the policies which eradicate poverty, hunger and
destitution, much of the new urban habitats would be composed of the deprived and city’s
unwanted population. The urban population of developing countries of Asia-Africa-Latin
America would constitute more than 81% of the total population of towns and cities across the
world. The UN estimates that by 2030 more than 43 mega cities with a population exceeding
10 million would be a reality. The report ‘State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the
Potential of Urban Growth’ warns that this decisive shift from rural to urban growth would
change the balance which has lasted for millennia and bring an enormous challenge of service
delivery and governance to national governments. Therefore the report alerts that nations
should be aware of the fact that ‘this unprecedented wave of urbanization offers potential
opportunities or dismal failures’ or a thin choice between a utopia or dystopia. Quoting Prof.
Carlos Moreno in his book for Netexplo, the sociologist Bernard Cathelat writes, “If the 19 th
century was the century of empires and 20th century the century of nations, the 21st century is
without doubt, the century of cities.”
Smart city is not to be understood simply as an exhibition of glittering skyscrapers with
stinking, unhealthy, unreached and bleached slum populations carpeting its feet. Many scholars
consider an overpowering political dimension to a smart city discourse which highlight its
capacity to sustain democratic empowerment of citizens so that they are participative in disaster
resilience building as partners to governance. Drawing out of micro-level research literature of
social sciences the undue technological implantation has been questioned. According to the
European Commission, smart city mission would generate a market of 1 trillion euros in
2020.The new Netexplo work of Prof. Bernard Cathelat released by UNESCO indicated “For
cities this is the key investment..it is good for the economy because it attracts companies and
creates high value added jobs..” Further information on ‘Smart City, Smart
Business’I’UsineDigitale by Nicholas Clinckx (2014) guides further that this market which is
currently thought to represent between 6-8 billion dollars could reach to 20 to 40 billion dollars
by 2020 and some estimates also mention it to be around 100 billion dollars for the next decade.
In USA a New York Times editorial warned of the growing influence of Wall Street financiers
in Detroit, and possibly other cities as well. Their Securities and Exchange Commission had
not completed rules, while the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's rules were so weak
as to virtually invite the banks to exploit municipalities. It also found the undue influence of
economic elites as cadres of Wall Street brokers sold city officials on a plan to build a new
sports arena, civic center, and marina using municipal bonds which took effect in 2004, but
later by 2008 the city sank into serious economic crisis.(Investigative reporting of Drew
Reed author of @ This Big City, is an online media producer and community activist
specialising in sustainable transportation).
A book published in 2015 by Daniel Araya “Smart Cities as Democratic Ecologies” has
highlighted many dilemmas embedded within the concept and have to be addressed as the
policy advances. A smart city is undoubtedly a green city which employs green
technologies for sustainability and good health. This leads to many technology driven
changes to democracy and civic engagement. The author writes, “In conjunction with issues
related to power grids, transportation networks and urban sustainability, there is a growing
need to examine the potential of 'smart cities' as 'democratic ecologies' for citizen
empowerment and user-driven innovation. What is the potential of 'smart cities' to become
platforms for bottom-up civic engagement in the context of next generation communication,
data sharing, and application development? What are the consequences of layering public
spaces with computationally mediated technologies? Foucault's notion of the panopticon, a
metaphor for a surveillance society, suggests that smart technologies deployed in the design of
'smart cities' should be evaluated in terms of the ways in which they enable, or curtail, new
urban literacies and emergent social practices.”
India has to attend to the greatest existentialist challenge as three of its cities would fall in the
top eleven most populated cities of the world. Mumbai (2nd with 25.97 population), Delhi (3rd
with 25.83 population) and Kolkata (11th with 18.54 population) sharing a population of
70.34m. out of a total of 254.69m. However, the threat of dystopia comes from the fact that the
percentage rate of population growth in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata is threatfully 2.32,3.48
and 1.74 as compared to Tokyo (1st with 37.28 population),Mexico(5th with 21.81 pop.) and
USA (9th with 20.43 pop.) where the percentage growth rate is much lower at 0.34, 0.90 and
0.66 only. This suggests that extremely dangerous future scenario exists for the government of
India in terms of governance and city management. The government has to prepare itself with
planning, funding and appropriate technology to find solutions to a major disaster waiting to
happen in cities in the form of traffic jams, urban sprawls, fire, water and food scarcity and
toxification, urban health epidemics, electronic waste and CFCs increase due to airconditioning
and scraping off the green spaces in cities.
Would Smart Cities be simply Money Guzzlers or Disaster Sensitive?
Funding for the smart city may not really go for disaster preparedness. Experts at UNESCO
Smart City Accelerator Meet at Paris during April suggested PPP as the only way to generate
funds for the smart city. World Bank estimates show that the capacity of public sector to fund
this form of development is highly limited and may not exceed 20-25% of the required 3.3
trillion dollars for smart cities. This in itself diverts public and non-profit government
responsibility to a minimum. The private sector which could fund to the extent of 60% and
international development finance institutions like the World Bank, European Investment Bank
or the Asian Development Bank could possibly fund 20% of the smart city expenditure
notwithstanding the 70% financing would be coming through debts. These emerging
complications can be resolved by establishing a good logic by the NDMA to seek a share of
the funds for disaster preparedness. China has already invested 1.3 trillion Yuan in its 3600
smart city projects but again disaster is a marginal reference. How to bring disaster
management to the core of financing demands would require the Disaster Management
Authorities to work in close coordination with the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate
Change as well as the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs. So far the disaster management
authorities are an island in themselves. Their work ought to be mainstreamed in the law and
governance authorities.
Experience From Across the World:
Major Changes in the direction of Disaster Resilience affects the Governance of cities;
Singapore looks at it as an opportunity for a smart nation as it aims to achieve convenience,
enterprise efficacy and new jobs and skills besides enabling a lean, agile and future ready
government. Sao Paulo in Brazil has a different story to share. Marianna Sampaio the deputy
secretary of Innovation Technology from this city highlighted the big wedge which exists
between the reality and the imaginary smart city concept. The tech parks, start ups and the
digitization further increase exclusion beyond the capacity of city governance to handle.
Sociologist Bernard Cathelat warning against a trend towards gentrification analyzed that these
new smart cities in contrast to their older counterparts appear more socially selective and non-
inclusive. This is due to an unavoidable fact that globalized economy being the goal, smart
cities are designed to attract new digital technology, Artificial Intelligence solutions, Internet
of Things, Big Data Managers, Robotics and Smart Mobility solutions which would bring a
convergence of new breed international professionals, executives, business leaders and most
qualified cosmopolitan population who would speak and live an entirely new language, jargon
and life styles. The historically perceived ‘unsmart, ugly and dirty’ population would be further
thrown outside the developmental grid. This would be counterproductive to the objective of
community resilience building in disaster management. Ironically, even though all experts
indicate solutions to escape disasters in a smart city plan but none has a hold on either the
findings of Hyogo Declaration or the Sendai Objectives to be achieved by 2030. Even some of
the ground realities embedded in the Sustainable Development Goals take a backseat in front
of passionate technologists promoting their digital innovations craving to be implanted and
marketed. This is visible in the fact that Carlo Ratti, an exceptional transport solution researcher
from MIT in his presentation at Paris Netexplo Network said, ‘smart city in India, first and
foremost means smart citizens’. So, till citizens are smart, India cannot initiate a smart city. It
is also a great disjunct that the countries where smart cities are an indispensable survival
requirement are going missing from UNESCO’s concerns on the table. Ironically, China,
Africa and Europe dominate this debate.
South Asian and Middle Eastern governments have devoted substantial resources and have
made significant strides in developing early warning systems (EWS). The Indian
Meteorological Department (IMD) — the key institution for issuing EWS in floods and
cyclones — has developed a multi-stage cyclone warning system. India has also made advances
in the development and deployment of the aircraft meteorological data relay system, the cloud
motion vectors (CMVs) and the very high-resolution radiometer (VHRR) payload onboard
INSAT–2E to provide water vapor channel data.The United Arab Emirates (UAE), too, has
introduced sophisticated, well-coordinated mobile early warning systems. The country’s
National Emergency, Crisis and Disasters Management Authority (NCEMA) has a unified
electronic system to send warning messages to the public through telecommunications
networks. The integrated functioning, efficiency in simplicity, and speed has greatly benefited
the Abu Dhabi police, which depends on EWS for managing many concerns of governance
and safety. The 2009 Jeddah floods — one of Saudi Arabia’s most catastrophic disasters —
remain fresh in the consciousness of Saudi officials and the public alike. Like Nepal, Saudi
government was also found ill-prepared to respond to swarms of small earthquakes that struck
Harrat Lunayyir in the northwest part of the country. Many of these concerns ought to be
brought centre stage in the smart city discourse across the world.(From Amita Singh’s
published research in Middle East Journal USA)
The Key Issues in building Disaster Resilience in Smart City Discourse
So what is to be set right in a smart city plan for cities in India and rest of the world? Some key
issues have been identified as follows;
1. Smart Disaster Management Machinery: Disaster Management Network, Legal
framework, Meteorological Organizations, Geo-physical monitoring stations, Remote
Sensing authorities. Training, response mechanism, sensitivity to duty, transparency,
information dissemination, coordination, respect for life.
2. Smart Technology Solutions: digital innovations in traffic, Early Warning Systems,
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in city alert and rescue operations.
3. Smart Service Delivery: basic human needs such as water, health, education, common
service centres, Local Governance & Telecommunication network to receive alerts,
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in city alert and rescue operations.
4. Crime Management: Enlightened policing, corruption-free Police Stations, anti-
trafficking stations, cyber cells of police to handle human and non-human distress calls,
ethics and integrity of city administration.
5. Social and community preparedness: Shelter homes, hospitals for human and non-
human populations, policies for animal birth control, a trained and coordinated city
governance to manage food, water, timely rescue, machine operation training to remove
fallen trees, man-animal conflicts, water and food scarcity.
Paper Abstracts & How to participate?
1. This conference will have only invited papers from top experts across the world’s smart
city networks. Please send a list of your work in this field as we may miss out some
good work and brilliant experts we still do not know about.
2. Those interested in presenting their upcoming work and studies , who wish to seek
knowledge based opinion and inputs are requested to send abstracts in 1000 words with
a title, objectives, central idea, description of the study and direction which it expects
to achieve.
3. PhD scholars who have recently completed their work on disaster resilience of smart
cities or are about to submit their thesis are welcome to send their abstracts as in point
2 above.
Last date for submission of abstracts/writeups: 31st October
Financial Support and Accommodation:
Only collaborators (Netexplo University Network, UNAB, ICSSR, NIDM) and invited foreign
experts are offered full support and accommodation. Other individual participants may get
accommodation support and partial travel funding depending upon available resources and the
value inputs of their work to the conference theme. This information on the amount of support
may be sent by the end of September. An administrative coordination team may look into the
support requirements of participants.
Registration:
A registration amount of Rs.1000/- per person may be charged from all who wish to attend the
three day conference. This would include Conference Kit, food and access to all special expert
sessions etc.
Last date for registration: 31st October.
Contact:
Office
Special Centre for Disaster Research
Aruna Asaf Ali Marg
(Next to VC Gate, opposite IIT Gate and Vastu Kala Academy)
New Delhi 110067
Coordination Team
m.+91-9599853905 (Gaurika Chugh)
m.+91-9654484198(Mung Vualzhong)
m.+91-7889609656 (Chetana Attri)
E-mail: jnu.scdr@gmail.com/ SCDR Office: 011-26741964
Office Assistants:
Deepak Kumar: +91 8586998280
Hemchand Pandey: +91 9810076468
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