Leaving behind the first industrial revolution that swept the western world more than 250 years ago, when the production equipment used to be powered by steam and water, the world has become a rapidly evolving ‘digital’ landscape.
These are the days of the hugely popular Internet of Things (IoT), Social Media, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC), machine learning and so on which are ‘connecting’ not only people but devices around them in a manner that is hitherto unimagined, eventually leading to the transformation of cities into ‘smart’ ones, said speakers at a national symposium on ‘Smart cities – challenges and opportunities’ organised here on Friday by A.P. State Skill Development Corporation (APSSDC), Information Technology Association of Andhra Pradesh (iTAAP) and Efftronics Systems Private Limited (ESPL).
Giving a perspective on the smart cities programme, iTAAP president Ravi Eswarapu and ESPL executive managers D. Anvesh and S. Bhavani Sankar said from advanced robotics to pioneering inventions like Amelia, a virtual employee created by a leading IT and business process automation company based in the U.S., it was all going to be a combination of descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics to breach the frontiers of science and technology the digital way.
ADVERTISEMENT
Minister for Law and Justice Kollu Ravindra said the Fibrenet project taken up by the State government was poised to play a crucial role in the development of smart cities and called for a collaborative effort to achieve the goals thereof.