ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT INDEX FOR SMART CITIES

Abstract

A rapid growth of urbanization in the form of cities across the globe has brought about key environmental challenges associated with it such as the global warming and climate change. The cities as predominant centers of human settlement and activity, are a major driver of economic growth also. Different research works and reports on environmental issues are presenting a horrific picture of climate change and it appears that the current society shall witness unprecedented challenges for sustenance. Implicitly, sustainable cities are in the agenda of United Nations(UN) as well as the Government of India. Consequently, it become imperative to observe these sustainable cities as a source of environmental friendly living and prosperity. Thus, this research work is organized to study some of the interrelated concepts namely growth of urbanized societies with a focus on smart cities, environmental issues and sustainable development. With an envisaged investment of INR 9800 Billion, Smart Cities Mission launched in 2015 by Government of India is a landmark step aiming to transform the urban landscape through the development of 100 smart cities in India in this regard. Creation of a Special Purpose Vehicle(SPV) with a Chief Executive Officer(CEO) to drive the smart city initiatives seems to be an attempt to manage smart cities like a corporate. Smart city initiatives require a sizeable investment . Tax Increment Financing or issue of bonds has been proposed as an alternate by few of the researchers. The rating given by agencies such as Moody's impact the reputation of municipal corporations and hence their ability to gather funds from municipal corporation infrastructure bonds issued by them. Limited housing tax collection, when not many citizens in India are willing to come under the purview of housing tax, poses another challenge in maintenance and continuation of such initiatives. Thus, similar to a company , sustainability should be an integral part of any smart city management. This study was conducted in three broad steps. In the first step, to gain a comprehensive understanding of ‘cities’, ‘smart cities’, ‘indicators of smart city’ and their relation to environmental impact, an extensive literature review was conducted through a reproducible, and transparent methodology incorporating scoping of review, identifying relevant literature and including research papers. A review of prominent globally recognized smart city standards was also done. City (including smart city) management involves a multitude of disciplines such as Architectural Engineering, ii Civil Engineering, Transportation Engineering, Information Technology, Healthcare and Management, to mention a few key ones. Based on the Literature review, several research gaps emerged and it was clearly evident that smart city sector is without a universally agreed definition and more work needs to be done in the area of smart city standards, indicators, benchmarks. Hitherto, the existing indicators had often lacked in standardization, consistency, or comparison over time or across cities. Concurrently, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with experts who were knowledgeable, were conducted to identify and firm up smart city schematic themes and indicators relevant to the Indian context.. The above step culminated into the design of a few versions of survey questionnaire. In the second step, after discussions with experts, a questionnaire was finalized for pilot testing with 36 practitioners. Based on further observations and suggestions, few modifications and rephrasing of questions was done to arrive at the final survey questionnaire with 48 indicators under 17 smart city schematic themes. This questionnaire was used to capture responses during personal interactions with total 174 knowledgeable (with respect to urban planning and smart cities) practitioners willing to participate in the study. Data for select 52 cities with respected to the identified smart city indicator values was also collected, majorly from multiple secondary sources. In the final step, Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL ) method was used to arrive at the ranking and weights of the various identified smart city schematic themes and indicators. These were validated by the 18 GIFT Smart City professionals with 2-7 years of experience in smart city domain. The results showed that among others , urban planning , economy , environment, education and finance are the most important schemes with their associated indicators . Out of the 17 schemes, 8 are perceived by experts as causal schemes (Urban planning , Economy , Education, Finance, Governance, Transportation , Telecommunication and Innovation) while 9 are perceived as effect schemes (Environment, Health, Safety, Water & Sanitation, Recreation, Shelter, Waste Water , Solid Waste, Fire & Emergency Response) . Also, a convergence was observed between the technical, managerial and techno-managerial professionals with respect to assigning rankings and weights to the smart city themes. Thus there seems to be a unity of direction. understanding of the concept among the respondents - iii managers, engineers , doctors , academicians and urban town planners seems to be the same. This helps in avoiding a conflict of interest. Just like the financial health of a company is monitored with the help of various financial ratios, various performance scores/indexes can be used to monitor the performance of a smart city. Based on the calculated weights and collected smart city indicator values, performance scores were calculated for select 52 cities with respect to various smart city schematic themes of Water and Sanitation, Solid Waste, Waste Water, Urban Planning, Health, Transportation, Shelter, Education, Safety, Environment, Finance, Energy, Governance, Telecommunication and Innovation, Recreation, Fire and Emergency Response and Economy. These scores were clubbed into environment, social, and economic dimensions to arrive at city performance scores for environmental performance (impact), social performance and economic performance. The total of these yielded the final composite smart city index score . The above performance index scores are then used to rank the select 52 cities. These performance scores can be readily exhibited in the form of an algorithmic form smart city dashboard which can be used by city administrators, mayors, smart city CEOs or even citizens to regularly monitor the performance of their cities. Fed with regular data collection on the smart city indicators, such a smart city performance dashboard can be used to gain assessment of how cities are performing on a smart city parameter. Through this, those parameters demanding attention and focus can be known and necessary corrective actions and /or policy measures initiated. This should also help in improving the ratings of bonds issued by their municipal corporations for infrastructure financing. It is expected that governmental policies directed towards focussing on the prioritized smart city themes (as arrived at through this study) are likely to yield effective and efficient fruitful results. This becomes all the more important when the funds for investment are very limited. Also, due to inter-relationships between the smart city themes, when one causal theme is focused upon, other associated impact themes are likely to be impacted automatically. Further, inherently, the concept of a Smart City goes way beyond the transactional relationships between citizen and service providers and involves enabling and encouraging the citizens to become proactive and participative members of the community. To conclude, the success of any smart city initiative is driven majorly by implementation in line with systematically iv identified priorities and is possible only with an active engagement and involvement of smart citizens as stakeholders with a right aptitude and attitude. For a comprehensive understanding, readability and convenience, this thesis has been organised in the form of six chapters as follows: Chapter 1 - Introduction Beginning with the rationale of the study, we ponder over a key questions - Why care about environment ? Through scientific evidence, global warming and linkage between human population, economy and carbon emissions is established. Major developments related to Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and environmental sustainability are also explored. Further, future urbanization trends and implications are discussed along with the critical role of cities for environmental sustainability. Thereafter we look at Indian urbanization scenario and the Smart Cities Mission launched by the Government of India. Towards the end, a need for prioritization of smart city schematic themes and an index is discussed. along with organization of Thesis in brief. Chapter 2 - Literature Review In this chapter, after investigating the scientific evidence of global warming and linkage between human population, economy and carbon emissions, a methodological and thematic literature review on 'smart city' is performed through a systematic literature review methodology involving scoping, identifying relevant literature related to cities and smart cities. Evolution of the concept of smart city is studied coupled with highlighting key issues and associated challenges of Smart Cities Mission in India.Popular definitions of smart city in literature are studied. Important prevalent standards for smart cities are then investigated to identify what are the various themes and indicators recognized as core and that enable qualifying a city to be called smart. Consequently, Smart City standards emerge as a step towards developing a environmental performance index for smart cities. An overview of existing tools and methods for Environmental Impact Assessment of a territory is also carried out to identify key smart city themes and associated indicators. All this with a purpose to lay a strong foundation towards building up a robust mechanism for developing an Environmental Impact Index for Smart Cities. v Chapter 3 - Research Methodology Based on the research gaps identified through literature review, research question is framed. Thereafter, research objectives are framed towards answering the research question. Subsequently, research methodology followed in this research study is discussed enumerating the Phase I (Qualitative study) and Phase II (Quantitative study) . Sampling and data collection is outlined along with discussion on the steps involved in Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) Model used for estimating the weights of the smart city themes and indicators to enable calculating performance indices of smart cities. Chapter 4 - Results and Analysis In this chapter grouping of the smart city themes is done and importance of smart city schematic themes and performance indicators is assessed through the opinion of 36 experts. Prioritizing linkage between some of the key smart city themes and indicators such as Transportation(road accident related fatalities) and Environment (Air pollution) , Health (Average life expectancy) and other themes is investigated followed by estimating prioritization, ranking and weights of smart themes and indicators using DEMATEL method. A case study on Gujarat International Finance Tec (GIFT) City - India’s first operational Smart City and International Financial Services Centre( IFSC) is developed based on the data collected during visit to GIFT City. Towards the concluding part of the chapter, another case study on Campus environmental footprint and sustainability initiatives at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee- the oldest technical institution of Asia is given. This case study was developed as a part of the project work done during the course work of this Ph.D. Chapter 5 - Discussion and Implications This chapter entails discussion about implications of the study. Chapter 6 - Conclusions , Limitations and Future Scope vi The conclusion of the study along with the limitations encountered , some of which also extend a scope for future research are outlined in this chapter.