Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT)- The first smart city in India- is under construction at Gandhinagar in Gujarat. The proposed city plan includes ICT enabled infrastructure such as smart grids and automated waste collection. India has allocated 60 billion rupees form its annual federal budget for this financial year towards developing smart cities. Going by numerous comments made by the vocal online population, there seem to be a certain amount of skepticism about the success of the planned city. Follow the link for more information on this in Reuters.
On Monday, November 19th, Rohan Samarajiva, Nuwan Waidyanatha, and Natasha Udu-gama of LIRNEasia, along with Menake Wijesinghe of Sarvodaya‘s Community Disaster Management Centre went to New Delhi, India for the second in a series of workshops on the “Evaluating Last-Mile Hazard Information Dissemination” (HazInfo) entitled “Sharing Knowledge on Disaster Warning: Community-Based Last-Mile Warning Systems” at the India Habitat Centre in conjunction with the All India Disaster Management Centre (AIDMI). The workshop included a variety of stakeholders from Indian government, civil society, international organizations, private sector, and NGOs. Mr. Mihir Bhatt, Honorary Director of AIDMI, along with Mr. Mehul Pandya, Risk Reduction Transfer Initiative Coordinator and Ms.