| |December 20188TOWARDS SMARTER CITIES EXPERTS OPINION By Rupinder Goel, CIO & Sr. Vice President, IT (Operations), Tata CommunicationsRupinder is the leader in Digital Business Transformation, B2B & B2C Digital Commerce, Digital Evangelist & leads Global Business Transformation for more than a decade across Global organisations in diverse sectors and with over 25 years of Information Technology experience. He is also a thought leadership in visualizing and executing Digital Business Transformation across domains with proven record in delivering business growth and profitability by leveraging technology.C ities can be defined as complex eco-systems that rely on multiple stake-holders and core systems to provide a range of services for citizens and businesses. These include public safety, transportation, healthcare, education, social services and so on. According to a World Econom-ic Forum report, 66 percent of the global population is estimated to live in cities by 2050. Even today, while cities cover just 2.6 percent of the world's land surface, they carry approximately 50 percent of the world's population. Expect-edly, this scenario is already put-ting huge pressure on natural re-sources and urban infrastructure. Managing this massive popula-tion in an uncoordinated manner could lead to social, economic and environmental disaster.Governments across the world are therefore turning to the concept of smart cities to tack-le progressively complex urban planning. A smart city strives to introduce `smart' solutions to po-tential or existing urban issues; for example: smart parking, smart education, smart grid, smart light-ing, smart healthcare, smart mo-bility, crowd-sensing etc.Just as people are flocking to wearable tech to monitor their health, cities, too, are turning to sensors to track their own vital signs. Through the Internet of Things (IoT), sensor-equipped wa-ter pipes can identify leaks, elec-tric meters can track power use, and parking meters can automati-
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