Smart Environment for Smart Cities (Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements)

This book discusses the design and practice of environmental resources management for smart cities. Presenting numerous city case studies, it focuses on one specific environmental resource in each city.

Environmental resources are commonly owned properties that require active inputs from the government and the people, and in any smart city their management calls for a synchronous combination of e-democracy, e-governance and IOT (Internet of Things) systems in a 24/7 framework. Smart environmental resources management uses information and communication technologies, the Internet of Things, internet of governance (e-governance) and internet of people (e-democracy) along with conventional resource management tools to achieve coordinated, effective and efficient management, development, and conservation that equitably improves ecological and economic welfare, without compromising the sustainability of development ecosystems and stakeholders.

Professor T. M. Vinod Kumar has 49 years of professional experience in urban and regional planning, urban and regional infrastructure, urban environmental management, application of GIS in urban planning, models in planning, urban design and smart cities. Further, he has extensive consultancy experience throughout India in connection with urban and rural development, infrastructure, tourism and healthcare, and in Malaysia with regard to new town planning and development, city centre and housing planning and structure plans. He has worked in Bhutan, China, Pakistan, Nepal and India as a regional program coordinator for the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development’s Energy for Mountain Development Program. Academically he has worked in the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi as a Professor, Head of the Department of Urban Planning, Head of the Centre for Systems Studies and Analysis, Head of Centre for Urban Studies and Dean of Studies at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. He also worked as a planner-engineer for the Ford Foundation, India. He was a Visiting Professor at Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia, and is currently at the National Institute of Technology, Calicut. He is the author of numerous books and journal articles and a project manager for several consulting projects in India and abroad.