New Delhi (NVI): New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru in India have witnessed a significant drop in their rankings in the Global Smart City Index that was topped by Singapore.
In the 2020 Smart City Index, Hyderabad was placed at the 85th position (down from 67 in 2019), New Delhi at 86th rank (down from 68 in 2019), Mumbai was at 93rd place (in 2019 it was at 78) and Bengaluru at 95th (79 in 2019).
The Institute for Management Development (IMD), in collaboration with Singapore University for Technology and Design (SUTD), has released the 2020 Smart City Index, with key findings on how technology is playing a role in the COVID-19 era.
In SCI’s context, ‘smart city’ describes an urban setting that apply technology to enhance the benefits and diminish the shortcomings of urbanization.
According to the report, the cities in India have suffered significant drops this year because of the detrimental effect the pandemic has had where the technological advancement was not up to date.
“Indian cities have suffered more from the pandemic because they were not prepared,” the report said.
The 2020 Smart City Index (SCI) was topped by Singapore, followed by Helsinki and Zurich in the second and the third place respectively.
Others in the top 10 list include Auckland (4th), Oslo (5th), Copenhagen (6th), Geneva (7th), Taipei City (8th), Amsterdam (9th) and New York at the 10th place.
The second edition of the SCI ranked 109 cities worldwide by capturing perceptions of randomly chosen 120 residents in each city.
Hundreds of citizens from 109 cities were surveyed in April and May 2020 and asked questions on the technological provisions of their city across five key areas: health and safety, mobility, activities, opportunities and governance.
Furthermore, this year’s rankings reflected that cities have differing approaches to technology as managing the pandemic has become increasingly important in local politics.
Smart cities closer to the top of the rankings seem to deal with unexpected challenges of the devastating pandemic with a better outcome, the report added.
-CHK
