Enterprise GIS Portal for Spatial Data Mapping for Kanpur Smart City
Kanpur Metropolitan Region, sprawling over an area of 260 sq km, is the biggest city and the principal commercial, industrial and educational center in Uttar Pradesh. As per the Government of India’s guidelines, the Kanpur Municipal Corporation (KMC) has formed a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) as Kanpur City Limited for the implementation of projects under the Smart City Mission.
The proposal for Kanpur Smart City, however, includes the retrofitting of 1475 acres adjacent to the south bank of Ganga into a vibrant all-day-round destination. The region would serve as an economic engine dwelling on the pillars of social equity and “citizen-first” governance, create a low-impact carbon-neutral model for a healthy environment, and take the form of a walkable, well-connected mixed-use area with public realm investments visible in its streets, public spaces and buildings.
Project Focus
Challenges
Gathering authenticated data from KMC concerning citizen amenities, education, emergency facilities, travel and transport, healthcare facilities, and so on, and the limited spatial information available for robust infrastructure development was proving to be a formidable challenge.
At the same time, making data and solutions accessible for various hierarchical roles was challenging, considering the rapid growth of Kanpur city, the accompanying demand for infrastructure and technology, and, thus, the involvement of diverse stakeholders. The need of the hour was to have a holistic GIS solution that takes care of different verticals associated with city management and offers visualization and analysis functions for timely decision-making.
The Solution
The KSCL Enterprise GIS portal was set up with a new geodatabase that helped capture spatial data related to mapping various components in the smart city, such as various administrative boundaries, drains and water supply infrastructure, emergency services, building footprints and local points, civic, education and transportation facilities, and so on. The same portal is in use during the COVID-19 pandemic for mapping affected areas and residents, thus helping the city administration obtain a clear view of the situation to take timely action for curbing the disease’s spread.
The Enterprise GIS portal offers identity management, authentication, and authorization for KSCL city admins, employees, and consumers, a web application for data viewing, querying, map printing, dynamic report generation, and advanced spatial data editing, as well as an Android-based mobile application for field data collection, logging field activities, geofence-based data viewing, and advanced spatial data editing.
Key Benefits
- Rapid data gathering on various smart city assets
- The flexibility of adding more data layers to the geodatabase for scalability
- Security and ease of web access to all spatial and non-spatial data and services
- Simplified visualization and understanding across verticals, including sign boards, traffic cameras, number plate detectors, and so on
- Facilitation of use of routing services for optimized location and multimodal transport facility finding