Mumbai has a lot of potential to become a ‘Smart City’. But this must be done sooner rather than later. At the onset, let’s discuss what constitutes for a ‘Smart City’? It’s one that makes its citizens live easier. It should represent an urban environment where people can live, work, commute, play and partake of many services. For all these activities to be made easier — both in terms of cost and time — Geographical Information systems (GIS) plays an important role.

So what is a GIS? Simply put, it is first digitising the city via digital maps and new 3D mapping technologies and then creating applications using the same to meet many end use requirements. Essentially, the fundamental layer is an accurate base map and attributes on top of it.