New Delhi: As many as 55 Integrated Command & Control Centers (ICCC) across India, under Smart City Mission, have been turned into a war room to fight against the Covid19 pandemic.
It connects people with the "Hello Doctor" telemedicine facility ensuring that patients do not have to move around seeking help for treatment. ICCC handles multiple responsibilities with the help of an integrated platform.
“ICCCs act as 24/7 nerve centres for city managers creating situational awareness and real-time coordination of emergency response services. ICCC infrastructure like control rooms, web portals, sensors, drones, public address systems, surveillance cameras are being used to coordinate activities related to information, awareness, management and implementation of lockdown,” said Kunal Kumar, Joint Secretary & Mission Director (Smart Cities Mission), Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) to ETV Bharat.
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He said that Covid-19 tracker applications, monitoring quarantine and isolation cases, apps for coordinating city departments and logistics, and telemedicine for medical appointments, are some of the works that are being done with the help of ICCC.
In fact, ICCC which forms the "brain and nerve center" for smart solutions at the city level, was effectively used by most of the Indian smart cities as part of their pandemic response strategies. This move also helped them coordinate and monitor activities of various state and city agencies.
Using the Covid-19 war room, the cities set up data analytics and monitoring dashboards to monitor and contain the spread of the virus. This helped cities to track and monitor positive cases and provide them timely health care support; isolation facilities.
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Proper tracking of a city also ensures the supply of essentials; and provides food to economically weaker and vulnerable sections of the society, sets up quarantine facilities, and disseminates relevant pandemic-related information.
Many of these cities also brought civil society, local businesses, and others on a single platform using web portals and mobile applications to collaborate with the city administration to provide public services.
The different city administrations have also taken the help of ICCC Covid war rooms for telehealth facilities and applications for online consultations and prescriptions. “Videoconferencing through the war room to boost the morale of home quarantined cases and remote capacity building and training for healthcare workers,” a MoHUA official said.
The ICCC is a crucial component of India’s Smart City project which was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015. Under the Smart Cities Mission, the government aims to develop 100 citizen-friendly and self-sustainable urban settlements in the country.
