Express Computer has been doing comprehensive coverage of how state Governments are tackling the COVID-19 pandemic by using digital tools and other technologies. In today’s edition, we cover the city of Pune in Maharashtra. The city has one of the highest number of COVID-19 patients in the state and is completely sealed until April 27.
The Pune Smart City Development Corporation’s (PSCDCL) Command and Control Centre has been converted into a COVID-19 war room. All the important officers, at the state, police, local authorities operate from there. The decisions taken with respect to drawing of new containment zones, sealing specific roads, deploying new teams for field surveys are taken at the war room. These decisions require inter-departmental dialogue and the smart city infrastructure has all the available data in the right format on the dashboards, to be discussed upon by the senior officials – district collector, commissioner, officials from the health department, survey teams, disaster management head, contact tracing incharge, police, etc. Accordingly, orders are issued.
The Pune Municipal Corporation has launched an app, viz. ‘Sanyam’ to keep track of the home quarantined. They have been asked to download the app, with the GPS-always on mode. “Every ten minutes, the app speaks with the server and refreshes the location of the quarantined people. It collects the data of their geolocation and in case they breach the threshold area, the command centre executive will alert them with a green, red alert depending upon the distance,” informs Rahul Jagtap, Head of Department, Information Technology, Pune Municipal Corporation.
For the foreign travellers, a fifty people call centre team is involved in counselling and enquiring them about health related issues. It provides them psychological support to lead a routine life and report to the command centre in case of any health issues.
A GIS analytics tool is developed for the 1500 strong field survey team working in the containment and buffer zones. The field data gathered by the team is superimposed on the maps on the dashboards of the command centre. The data then, using heat mapping technologies and predictive analytics, guides in marking the buffer zones. These feeds are provided to the citizen centric Information, education and communication (IEC) activities – ward wise maps related to deaths, positive patients, social media sentiment analysis, etc. More information can be found on the facebook page of PMC Pune, https://www.facebook.com/PMCPune/.
The most critical aspect to make the efforts successful of thousands of employees working in various teams, is to coordinate the actions. The district collector is at the helm at the city level and the health department is heading and acting as the nerve centre for all operations related aspects.
When asked about, what is the one activity, which is keeping the authorities busy, Jagtap says, “Contact tracing is consuming the most energy now. It’s being done through call detail record (CDR) files,” The data is shared with the disaster management team.
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