We discuss the following topics in this blog:
- The shift in post-pandemic living patterns
- Significance of smart cities in the ‘New Normal’
- Tech-Enabled Health Safety Practices
In addition to these topics, we shall also be answering the following FAQs:
- What is WiFi?
- What is Open RAN?
Contents
What Will Life Look Like in the ‘New Normal’?
The COVID-19 crisis has brought all the major cities of the world at the frontline of charting out newer ways and means to deal with it. The cities are experiencing unprecedented strain – right from stressed out economies to overwhelmed healthcare systems. As the nations continue to fight against the pandemic, confining people to their homes, and changing the way the world moves, works and thinks, a question is lingering in everybody’s minds is: What life will look like in the ‘New Normal’, post-pandemic?
The COVID-19 is already posing one of the biggest challenges of all time, while the cities are struggling to provide even basic amenities like access to water and clean sewerage. Other issues being daily wagers suffering from lost income and scarcity of social safety, required most at times like these.
As we are strictly confined to our homes for a quarter now, the significance of basic amenities like building with more light and ventilation and resistance to natural calamities increases manifolds.
Right now, the world is witnessing a lack of resilience in urban living with a profound impact on the poor.
Amidst all the fear and apprehension, we could now figure out how our future cities should look like. Right when cities are undergoing crisis management for recovery, the gaps in our urban infrastructure that have been exposed due to this crisis, will now translate into more resilience.
COVID-19 has extended the greatest opportunity to reconsider and restructure urban informal settlements. It could be seen as an opportunity for incorporating the element of ‘sustainability’ in cities by taking measures that could mitigate the risks arising from pandemics as these and also, in the future, could be adapted to deal with other crisis and climate risks.
Are our Cities Prepared for the ‘New Normal’?
After the pandemic ends and the’ new normal’ begin, citizens will now look for safe cities that:
- Enable infrastructure protection
- Top-notch city surveillance
- Excellent transport security management
- Emergency centres
- High-tech transportation and road information systems
- Automatic vehicle locating system
Urban areas will have to be redesigned and planned to survive the effects of climate change and disasters. Architects will have to provide for more ventilation and natural light and reduce the use of air conditioners.
Any city planning should be inclusive with space for the poor, the vulnerable and the migrant sections who are subject to the maximum stress during a crisis.
In the future, architects might find design solutions for buildings and societies that enable people to socialise without overcrowding restaurants, bars and clubs.
With WFH likely to become a norm in the future, people would prefer staying back in their home cities (many a time, tier-2 or tier-3 cities). The urban developers must think about offering affordable residential options and a higher quality of life just as they were used to in metros.
Our cities are major contributors to the national economy, there is a need to maximise the economic potential of these urban clusters and other tier-1 and tier-2 towns. The aim is to promote local economic growth.
Tech-Enabled Health Safety Practices
The current health crisis has taught us to increase the intensification of digital infrastructure in our cities. Some cities have successfully contained the spread of the disease by just mapping infected persons’ movements. They have been using “big data” analysis to anticipate where transmission clusters will emerge next. These are much safer cities from the public health perspective and we can also leverage the power of such health surveillance in the new normal.
The safe and smart city of the future must include planning for infrastructure and housing for wellbeing and resilience for the poor living in urban regions, developing and improving infrastructure across the developing world to bridge the urban services divide and at the end planning an infrastructure that is geared towards a sustainable future.
FAQs
What is WiFi?
Put simply, WiFi is a technology that uses radio waves to create a wireless network through which devices like mobile phones, computers, printers, etc., connect to the internet. A wireless router is needed to establish a WiFi hotspot that people in its vicinity may use to access internet services. You’re sure to have encountered such a WiFi hotspot in houses, offices, restaurants, etc.
To get a little more technical, WiFi works by enabling a Wireless Local Area Network or WLAN that allows devices connected to it to exchange signals with the internet via a router. The frequencies of these signals are either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz bandwidths. These frequencies are much higher than those transmitted to or by radios, mobile phones, and televisions since WiFi signals need to carry significantly higher amounts of data. The networking standards are variants of 802.11, of which there are several (802.11a, 802.11b, 801.11g, etc.).
What is Open RAN?
From a deployment standpoint, we have Non-Standalone Mode(NSA), Dynamic Spectrum Sharing(DSS), and Standalone Mode (SA). The initial deployments of 5G NR are based on NSA standards, meaning the existing 4G LTE network will operate on the control plane, and 5G NR will be introduced to the user plane. This particular standard was introduced by 3GPP, keeping in mind the industry’s push to faster 5G services rollout while utilizing the existing 4G LTE infrastructure currently in place.
On the other hand, operators are also implementing Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) to accelerate the deployment cycle, which will reduce costs and improve spectrum utilization. In this standard, the same spectrum is shared between the 5G NR and 4G LTE, multiplexing over time per user demands. Lastly, we have the Standalone Mode (SA), which moves towards a complete 5G based network where both signaling and the information transfer are driven by a 5G cell.
