Data for Resilient Cities

In the final episode Prof. Shivanand Swamy, Director Emeritus, Center of Excellence in Urban Transport, CRDF is in conversation with Waltraut Ritter, independent researcher and founder of Knowledge Dialogues.  They talk about data analytics supporting cities mobility and resilience, human intervention on transportation, BRTS issues in integration, and sustainable development goal for mobility.  The episode also focuses on how data-driven models are used in transportation monitoring and data analytics for mobility to make cities resilient.

Prof. Shivanand Swamy is an economist and urban and regional planner with deep experience in transport systems, integrated land-use transport planning and development management.  He has been teaching at CEPT University since 1986 and has served as a policy and systems advisor to National, State and Local Governments on transport planning initiatives across the country.  He has been instrumental in spearheading the planning and operationalization of Janmarg, Ahmedabad, the first dedicated Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) in India.  He has also supported the planning and development of BRT systems in Surat, Indore, and Hubbali–Dharwad. Prof. Swamy has been an advisor to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India on evolving planning and design guidelines for BRTS and scaling up of bus-based services in Indian cities.  He is currently involved in facilitating technology adoption, operations, financing, and capacity building for transitioning to electric public mobility in India.  Prof. Swamy is an active member of the Developing Countries Committee of the Transport Research Board.

Waltraut Ritter is the founder of Knowledge Dialogues, specializing in research and advisory services relating to innovation, knowledge, and intellectual capital across the Asia?Pacific region and Europe.  She works on innovation projects at the intersection between universities, government, business, and civil society. Ritter is currently working on open innovation, a multi-stakeholder programme on transport data sharing for sustainable mobility in Hong Kong.  She also regularly contributes to knowledge?economy research of UNESCAP, UNESCO and OECD.  She holds an MA in Information Science and Sociology from the Free University of Berlin and an MBA from Anglia University, Cambridge, U.K.  Ritter is also a founding member of the New Club of Paris, a knowledge?economy think tank, the International Council on Knowledge Management, and is serving on the ICT Committee of the European Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong and Macau.

In the upcoming episode Vikas Kanungo, Senior Digital Development Consultant, The World Bank is in conversation with Luis E. Bermudez, CEO, GeoSolutions.  They talk about problems accessing urban data, National Data Sharing Policy, data trends, use of data integration and sharing in the US, ISO trends and open-data standards and policy.

Vikas Kanungo is a Smart City and m-Governance expert, trainer and advisor with more than 25 years of experience in Digital Platforms and ICT solutions strategy.  During his 25 years of career in the ICT industry, he has worked at key consulting and advisory positions with the Government of India, The World Bank, UNDP, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), European Union agencies.  He has also worked at a host of corporate agencies in India, Asia and the Middle East.

He is currently engaged in a global Knowledge initiative on Green Growth-Oriented Smart Cities & Shared Services Digital Platforms for Smart Cities as a Senior Specialist with the World Bank.  He is the Chairman of the Society for Promotion of e-Governance (SPeG), India and Founder Director of mgovworld.org – A global observatory on mobile governance.

He has been working as a Senior e-Governance Consultant with The World Bank since 2008.  Vikas has mentored several start-ups in m-Governance, Smart Cities solutions and provides advisory services to several government agencies and corporates on next-generation digital technologies for the public services delivery.  Vikas has also worked as an advisor with the Government of India for the formulation of mobile governance policy.  He has been involved in a global study of Citizen engagement of grievance redress systems using next-generation technologies, advisory services for conceptualizing Smart City frameworks as a Senior Consultant with The World Bank.

Vikas has authored more than a dozen papers on e-Governance/Smart cities and is co-author of the book “Digital Divides: New Challenges and Opportunities of e-Inclusion” published by CRC Press in 2015.  His report titled “India – Journey from Knowledge Economy to Inclusive Information Society” was released by the Indian government during WSIS Summit in Geneva as an action taken report by India on MDGs realization.

He has been regularly giving presentations around the world and has spoken at institutions ranging from the UNDP and the World Bank to government-supported conferences in India, Oman, Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Moldova, among many others.  Vikas has been a guest faculty for e-Governance courses in the Indian Institute of Public Administration, the National Academy of Direct Taxes and the Mudra Institute of Communication.

Dr. Luis Bermúdez is the CEO of GeoSolutions USA, one of the world’s leaders in supporting commercial, open-source geospatial software.  Before joining GeoSolutions, Dr. Bermudez worked for 10 years at the Open Geospatial Consortium, advancing open standards used worldwide.  First, as the Director of the Compliance Program and then as Executive Director of the Innovation Program.  Previously he worked at a university consortium SURA in the architecture and implementation of a hurricane forecasting system in a distributed environment, using open standards.  He also worked at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute developing real-time information systems from marine sensors. He earned his PhD in environmental Informatics at Drexel University in 2004.

In this episode of Contribution of Technology in Making Cities Resilient ,Vishnu Chandra talks to Ton De Vries.

The two speakers discuss Geo-Spatial technologies, a framework for data collection and preservation, use of data sources and data management plans along with open data initiatives for such systems.  They also talk about expansion of geo-spatial technology to big data technologies and the role of governments and international organisations.  

Vishnu Chandra is the Deputy Director General & Head of Group, National Informatics Center (NIC) Divisions (Geo-Spatial Technology & Services, MoHUA, MoEF&CC, Power, MoLE, MNRE and Coal).  Ton De Vries is Senior Director, Business Development Digital Cities, Bentley Systems Exton, Pennsylvania, United States.

In this episode of Using Big Data to Predict Natural Disasters, C.K. Koshy talks to Dr. Bapon (SHM) Fakhruddin about theoretical framework for Disaster Management, methods adopted in the past for floods and droughts. They also discuss data challenges in the past and today, technology, data sharing and creating awareness among organizations.

C.K. Koshy retired from The Indian Administrative Service in 2005 in the rank of Additional Chief Secretary after a long and illustrious career spanning thirty-seven years in the higher echelons of the Government of Gujarat and the Govt. of India. He was the Secretary to the Govt of Gujarat of such crucial departments as Revenue, Industries and Finance as well as Managing Director of the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam. He was Financial Advisor to the Department of Atomic Energy, Govt of India, under the Prime Minister and Executive Director of the Nuclear Power Corporation.

He was Relief Commissioner during the period 1985-87 when Gujarat faced unprecedented drought for three years in succession. He was Additional Chief Secretary, Revenue Department and had coordinated Relief efforts post the earthquake in 2001.

Since his retirement Mr. Koshy has been deeply involved in higher education. He has taught courses in Governance and Public Policy to postgraduate students at the CEPT University and was also associated with the Centre for Heritage Management at Ahmedabad University as Chief Executive. He has been an advisor to several urban research projects and programs including developing an Inventory of Public Lands in Ahmedabad and a World Bank funded project on managing urban heritage in three major cities of India.

In his role as the Advisor to CEPT Research and Development Foundation (CRDF), he has been instrumental in forging important collaborations with State and Local Governments, developing training material and administering training programs tailored to different levels of public officials.

Dr. Bapon (SHM) Fakhruddin is a hydrologist by training, and has 17 years working experience in water engineering, climate, and disaster risk management. His key areas of expertise are hydrological modeling, early warning system, emergency communication, climate-proofing infrastructure and disaster risk reduction. He graduated in civil engineering and have a Master's in Water Engineering and Management. He has a PGD from the United Nations University, Canada and PhD in Water Engineering. He also studied Mathematical Modeling and GIS. Dr. Bapon is a certified Instructor of ICS from United States Forest Service (USFS).

He has hands on working experiences in implementing climate and disaster risk management projects more than 25 countries ( i.e. Barbados, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Cook Islands, China, Fiji, Dominica, Granada, India, Iran, Indonesia, Myanmar, Maldives, Marshall Islands, New Zealand, Nepal, Nauru, Niue, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Samoa, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, St Lucia, Thailand, Tanzania, Tonga, Tuvalu, Uganda, USA, Vietnam, Vanuatu.) to support national hydro-meteorological and disaster management agencies.

He has working experience with many international organizations (i.e. UCAR, NOAA, USDA/FS, IFRC, ADPC, WMO, UNDP- GEF, etc) and Universities (UNU, AIT, Kings College, City University NY, East West Center, etc).

In this episode of Massive cross domain data required for understanding Intelligent Urban Systems, Dr. Franz W. Gatzweiler talks to Manvita Baradi about urbanization and its problems with increasing complexities, data has proved to be urban nervous system during the pandemic, along with the UHWB programme that has formulated principles in its Xiamen Call for Action in context of Intelligent Urban Systems, globally. 
 
Dr. Franz W. Gatzweiler: Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Executive Director of the International Council for Science’s global programme on Urban Health and Wellbeing. Dr. Gatzweiler studied Agricultural Science at Bonn University and International Agricultural Economics at the Humboldt University of Berlin. His doctoral research topic at Humboldt University was on the “Nature of Economic Value”. He received stipends from the German academic Exchange Service (DAAD), German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH), and was visiting scholar at the Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis in 2003. He teaches courses at the faculty of Life Sciences of the Humboldt University of Berlin and at the University of Bonn. Dr. Gatzweiler’s research interests lie at the intersection of ecological, economic and social systems and cover problems of value in complex socio-ecological systems, institutional change in polycentric organization, marginality and technology innovations for productivity growth in rural development, co-production of science and fractal organization theory. Currently Dr. Gatzweiler is Executive Director of the Global Interdisciplinary Programme on “Health and Wellbeing in the Changing Urban Environment: a Systems Analysis Approach”, sponsored by the  International Council of Science (ICSU), the United Nations University (UNU) and the Interacademy Medical Panel (IAMP). 
 
Manvita Baradi is the Founder Director of Urban Management Centre – An organization working towards professionalizing urban management in India and in South Asia. She is the Founder Dean of the Faculty of Management at the CEPT University, designed and set up a 2-year post-graduate program in Urban Management (MUM). She has technical experience in developing and administering programs for Local Governments, capacity building of Local Government Associations, urban and regional planning, citizen participation, municipal performance measurement and international development. She is on the expert panel for Sanitation under Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban). She is the Head of the Technical Support Unit for the National Urban Livelihood Mission(NULM) of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and has been Team Leader Anchor for the HRIDAY mission city of Dwarka, Gujarat. She has also served as an expert on USAID, ADB, EU and World Bank funded programs for local governance, association development in India  and in post conflict regions, Afghanistan, Indonesia and Srilanka.

In this episode of Implementing Integrated Systems to Scale up the Urban Resilience, Stephen Passmore in conversation with Loveleen Garg, talks about the importance of having cross-domain integration for making cities infrastructure more resilient. The conversation is led with illustrations of enhanced data use and analytics and the common pathway of data science. The two speakers also talk about implications of data disclosure such as privacy, accuracy and interoperability. In the end, the episode focuses on a global scenario on common data standards which can help to scale up the sustainable infrastructure for cities.

Stephen Passmore, CEO, Resilience Brokers. Based in London, UK, Stephen is a passionate advocate for collective action by fostering links between research, policy, and action on the topics of sustainable and resilient cities and regions. Stephen joined the Resilience Brokers team in 2014 and has been leading the development and deployment of resilience.io an integrated, open-source platform for collaborative, low-carbon, city-region planning, investment and development.

Loveleen Garg has more than 20+ years of exposure in conceptualisation, designing, execution and operations of large scale infrastructure projects (PPP/ Public). Engineer with post graduation in Environmental Planning, has hands on experience in sustainable planning of Green Field smart City, Airports, SEZs, Power Plants, Ports and large urban development projects. EIA/ EC/ Sustainability reporting, Envn Compliance, Green Buildings and implementation of various ISO EMS, EnMS, OHSAS, CAMS etc had been other areas of working. In aviation, he has hands-on experience in implementing environmental and sustainability frameworks. He has lead the sustainability core team involved in implementing the carbon accounting and management system at Mumbai Airport and getting airport carbon accreditation for Level 1 (mapping) in 2012 and upgrading it to Level 2 (reduction) in 2013.

He played a key role in publishing the CSIA Sustainability Report 2012 as per GRI G3.1 guidelines, along with sector supplement with GRI application level check-A, the first of its kind in the Indian aviation sector. He has lead the team to work on the First Sustainability Report as per G4 guidelines by an Airport in the world. He has been involved in process re-engineering and business excellency to achieve sustainability goals. He has experience in developing and auditing various management systems (EMS ISO 14001, EnMS50000, OHSAS18000, CAMS ISO14064), designing and implementing GHG reduction programs, energy saving initiatives and projects registration under CDM protocol. He is also associated with academia and has delivered expert lectures & examined project works in Master’s Program related to environment & sustainability.

In this episode of the podcast series, Prof. Virginia Murray in a conversation with Dr. Dileep Mavalankar talks about the COVID-19 pandemic and the exposure to the virus across the world. She discusses the impact of COVID on city of London. Dr. Mavalankar shares India's fight with the virus and the results so far. They also talk about the importance of using data by governments to monitor health of the citizens and about the ground reality of COVID and its spread in India in spaces such as old age homes, subsequently leading to deaths. They also discuss in-depth about methods used by countries as they continue to fight with the pandemic, and the importance of data-driven policies. Actions taken in India, technology used to gather data and its analysis are some of the key elements of this episode.  

Prof. Dileep Mavalankar has been heading the Indian Institute of Public Health Gandhinagar as its Director since 2012. Dr. Mavalankar received an MBBS and MD in Preventive and Social Medicine from Gujarat University in Ahmedabad, and MPH and Dr. P.H from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, USA. His work experience includes faculty and research positions in NHL Municipal Medical College, Ahmedabad, National Institute of Health in Bethesda, USA, Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, India and Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, NY, USA. He has worked as consultant to many agencies including Columbia University, Mother Care Project (USA), the WHO (Geneva, Western Pacific Regional Office), UNICEF (New Delhi), DANIDA, UNDP/World Bank (India), the Aga Khan Foundation, CEDPA etc. Dr. Mavalankar has authored several publications. He has been adviser to key academic and government organizations and NGOs.

Prof. Virginia Murray is public health doctor committed to improving data access and transparency for effective reporting. She was appointed as Head of Global Disaster Risk Reduction (GDRR) for Public Health England in April 2014 and in 2020 has been working additionally as a Senior Public Health Advisor for COVID-19. She is a member of the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) scientific committee, co-sponsored by the International Science Council (ISC) and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and Co-Chair of IRDR’s Disaster Loss Data (DATA), and currently member of CODATA Executive Committee She is co-chair of the WHO Thematic Platform Health and Disaster Risk Management Research Network. By working in collaboration with this network she has been one of the editors of the WHO Guidance on Research Methods for Health and Disaster Risk Management, published in September 2020. She is the Chair of the UNDRR/ISC Hazard Classification and Review Technical Working Group, and the report was published in July 2020. She is a visiting/honorary Professor at several universities.

In the latest episode of the podcast series ‘Data for Resilient Cities,’ Darren Robinson starts a conversation on urban sustainability, resilience, and liveability with Avanish Pendharkar. He talks about the complexities of urban systems and their challenges. They also discuss how cities need to build a culture towards data collection, management, and publication to plan for sustainability, while also focussing on a policy framework to openly allow the use of publicly available data for planning and economic development. They discuss examples of data collection approaches in the UK and in India, like RERA where regulatory approaches have helped crowdsource data. They go on to talk about how these top-down differ from bottom-up approaches to obtaining data, and the opportunities and challenges that these approaches bring. In the end, the two advocate for the need for a policy framework and adoption of FAIR data practices in the collection and dissemination of data in an open-source format that cities and urban local bodies could adopt. 

Avanish is the Executive Director of CUPP. He is an urban planner from Georgia Tech and an urban designer from SPA, New Delhi, with over 20 years of international work experience.  He has had the privilege of working on large and complex planning projects and programs including the FIFA Qatar program. He has been a key member of the team that has worked on the implementation of AURIC City – one of the first large industrial cities under the DMICDC and has been a consultant for various development plans and master planning schemes for new towns and neighbourhoods.  

Darren Robinson is Professor of Architectural and Urban Sciences, School of Architecture, the University of Sheffield. He conducts research at the interface between social physics, building physics, and urban physics [people - buildings - city] and was editor and lead author of the book Computer Modelling for Sustainable Urban Design.

In this episode of Monitoring SDG Goal 6: Role of City and Country Systems along with Citizens,  Dr. Mehta and Mondardini talk about monitoring SDG 6 and local and country systems for data collection for water and sanitation. They also discuss a case study and data collection methods, data sharing policy for SDG, other global case studies, and best practices of using citizen data for water and sanitation. The two speakers also talk about the role of the city and national government in monitoring WASH at scale, and the role of Niti Aayog in India. Citizens' science is also an important element of the conversation as it makes the system very transparent and it’s very effective in terms of knowledge and education. Citizens can perform data collection, sampling, and ground-truthing which gives them a sense of ownership to the citizens. 

Dr. Meera Mehta is a Professor Emeritus at CEPT University and has 30 years of experience in water, urban development and infrastructure finance. She served as the Director of School of Planning at the University in 1992, before joining the USAID’s FIRE Project in India, and later the World Bank and its Water and Sanitation Program in Africa. In 2008, she spearheaded the Performance Assessment System (PAS) at CEPT University. The action research project supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation focused on developing robust methods and processes for performance assessment and improvement of urban water supply and sanitation in India. Meera is the Joint Executive Director of the Center for Water and Sanitation and serves as the Joint Project Director for 4 projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in India. She is on the board of the Stockholm-based inter- governmental organization Global Water Partnership (GWP) and IRC, a global not-for-profit organization driving resilient WASH systems across the world through research and advocacy. She was a member of the working group for the WHO-UNICEF post-2015 deliberations for water supply and sanitation. She has studied Architecture and Urban Planning and has a Ph.D. in Economics.

Maria Rosa (Rosy) Mondardini is the Managing Director of the Citizen Science Center Zurich, a joint effort of the University of Zurich and ETH. The Center supports Citizen Science projects at both institutions, in Switzerland, and beyond. She was previously co-director at the Citizen Cyberlab in Geneva,  a partnership between CERN, UNITAR, and the UniGe focused on developing new forms of public participation in research. From 2008 to 2015 Rosy has been working at the WEF as Associate Director, managing the YGL Alumni community.

In this episode of  Data-driven Policymaking for Resilient Built Environments,  Dr. Yash Shukla in a conversation with Jieling Liu sharing their experiences about using qualitative and quantitative data for studying indoor and outdoor built environment which is particularly important in the current context where many cities around the world are experiencing climate change impacts such as heatwaves and natural calamities. These impacts have made the world realize the urgent need for bold and innovative climate mitigation strategies. They talk also about the data life cycle in a research project and the challenges of making the data public.  In the end, the episode focuses on the efforts taken in various areas in order to enhance data-driven policymaking for making the cities more resilient. 

Dr. Yashkumar Shukla is Technical Director (Energy Systems) at Center for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy (CARBSE), CRDF. He has more than fifteen years of international experience in building energy-efficiency research and serves as a lead on several energy-efficiency research projects at CARBSE. His current research includes calibration of simulation models, performance characterization of envelope and HVAC systems, net-zero energy buildings, and development of next-generation control algorithms. He has extensive experience in building management systems, building energy analysis, HVAC system operation, component characterization facilities, development of test chambers, building simulation modeling, and energy efficiency control algorithms His prior work experience includes providing technical support in designing and implementing commercial and residential energy-efficiency programs in the US.

Jieling Liu is pursuing her doctorate degree in the interdisciplinary program in Climate Change and Sustainable Development Policies at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon. She is also Visiting Scholar at the Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Institutional Analysis at Indiana University Bloomington between 2019-2020. Besides, Jieling is Lead Guest Editor for the journal Cities & Health special issue - Asian City Futures: Spatial form and health. She has an academic background in Political Sciences and Journalism. Jieling’s thesis examines the planning and governance of urban green spaces as common-pool resources for climate change adaptation and health under Ecological Civilisation, in the context of rapid socio-economic urban development in China, with specific case studies drawn from Guangzhou.