BY TIOL News Service

BANGALORE, MAY 04, 2018: THE 4th Regional Conference on ‘Futuristic, Resilient and Digital Infrastructure' organized by the Ministry of Finance in collaboration with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS) concluded in Bengaluru today. This meeting was a lead-up to the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), to be hosted by the Government on June 25 & 26, 2018 in Mumbai. The Conference saw eminent delegates representing partner institutions, academia, civil society organizations and experts from various fields expressing their views on how to bring about institutional approaches for futuristic and digital infrastructure in India .

The thrust of the Conference was on three broad areas, including the challenges as well as opportunities in the context of need for futuristic, resilient and digital infrastructure, resource mobilisation and emerging challenges among others. The idea behind this particular Conference was to work simultaneously on these 3 focus areas for holistic understanding of a sustainable future in so far as infrastructure development is concerned. Integration (in urban planning and multi-modal transportation), inclusion, resilience were covered in the first three Plenary Sessions. Keeping in mind the enormous opportunities that digital technologies and the Fourth Industrial Revolution have in terms of promoting infrastructure development with focus on integration and resilience in infrastructure design and operations, as well as in influencing the very behavioral patterns of citizens and their response. In this regard, Digital Infrastructure was hailed as the ‘infrastructure for infrastructure'.

Since congestion is being treated as negative externality, experts gave lot of stress was on use of futuristic smart technologies to decongest, emerging digital technologies, satellite based services, intelligent traffic and city management much beyond real time data generation and dissemination. On the subject of resilience, much is understood in terms of damage protection and minimization in times of disasters – primarily natural as well as man-made like conflicts and terrorism.

The Futuristic Vision on Resilience would be able to focus on hazards, governance and institutions. Examples like – special design for hospitals to prevent inundation in times of flood; early warning systems not only for storms, tsunamis and cyclones but also for heat stress. The idea of creating Utility Maps for disaster preparedness would be futuristic and should be part of integrated planning. Community level partnerships and initiatives would be important in this regard.

Use of Digital Technologies would be effective for Early Warning Systems and reach maximum people. Information gathered needs to be coordinated and analysed in shorter time frames to prevent the adverse impact of both natural and man made disasters. Social cost of over-protection and hardships on preventive actions need to be factored in. Regarding integration and aglomeration, these concepts were alluded to over and over again across different Sessions in the context of rapid urbanization.

In this regard, it was discussed that integrated city planning holds key to inclusive development and minimizing exclusions. Such integration does not only refer to having robust master-plans for city expansion but also take into account cultural and anthropological parameters characteristic of the geography. Integrated city planning also leads to design in integration of multi-modal transportation. Use of technologies, particularly digital technologies would be critical for integration and future in terms of multi-modal transportation. Thereby, the twin challenges of infrastructure development is to enhance agglomeration, but at the same time reduce congestion.

However, urbanization is an outcome of people's choices and hence policy planning needs to have realistic vision on urbanization and economic opportunities. It is becoming increasingly clear that urban expansion is rapidly happening in the suburbs and Tier-2 cities. Sustainability of urban landscape would be critical from the perspective of land use, design of transportation and buildings, commute time, vertical versus horizontal city expansion (as evidence suggest that geographical expanse needed for sustainable living habitat for vertical city growth may not be substantially smaller).

In terms of future of mobility –scope of high speed railway, metro railway, resource efficient public transportation, dedicated corridors etc. were analysed thread bare. Apart from considerations like current needs versus future needs technically such projects are subjected to analysis on parameters like energy consumption and emission. Usually such assessments help in planning and adoption of new modes of transportation.

As already highlighted, Technological Solutions, Digital Infrastructure and the Digital Economy have enormous potential to address the above three concerns in terms of minimizing social costs and improving well being. Ubiquitous presence of digital technologies have created massive opportunities in the digital space. This is also the best way to leverage the creativity and innovation of all citizens. Devices and connectivity form the backbone of the future. Supply chains are getting transformed, inventory monitoring, assessment of depreciation and wear and tear can also be monitored in a precise way and customization is bringing more opportunities to production of goods and services.

The fundamental issues around Industry 4.0 going ahead would be the capability to produce, ability to connect and capacity to use. Policy framework ignoring any one of this would result in sub-optimum and even adverse outcomes. In this framework, trade policy regime in the context of ITA has been elaborated that has created unequal gains across countries and led to muted production of ICT goods in many countries including India. China have benefitted most among developing countries.