Experts suggest that Smart Cities in India should adopt appropriate technologies that are smaller in scale rather than go for large-scale technologies from big corporate players. Appropriate technologies can evolve with new innovations at minimum cost.

“This means creating an information infrastructure, data infrastructure on which a lot of small-scale firms and individuals can develop their own applications,” Subhrajit Guhathakurta, Director of the Center for Geographic Information Systems at the Georgia Institute of Technology said.

“And by institutionalising that infrastructure, you have different solutions coming in from different places that you may not even know of,” he said.

Guhathakurta, a Professor of City and Regional Planning as well as an expert in geospatial technologies, was speaking at the international symposium on “Livable habitat and sustainable infrastructure: A key to smart city growth.”

He cautioned that when you buy some big technology from a big corporate players, you are locked into that technology because it is expensive to shift.

The aim should be to evolve with new innovations at minimum cost, he said, adding that India’s Smart City plan is “mostly about good planning and it has a very small component dealing with technology.