Page 149 - Connecting cities and communities with the Sustainable Development Goals

United for Smart Sustainable Cities
Connecting cities and communities with the Sustainable Development Goals

2.1 Results
From the results of the pilot project, it was noted that the tunnels and other crossing structures are utilized
by wildlife. These structures were initially built for water drainage and for the benefit of residents in the area.
The incidence of species was deciphered based on its relative abundance index (RAI). The Siberian roe deer
and wild boar were found to have the highest RAI crossing structures fitted with cameras.

2.2 Other technologies

TRACKING PET ANIMALS IN ASPIRING SMART CITIES

While wildlife monitoring and regulation remains to be a matter of concern under SDG15, the scenario for
pet animals in aspiring is not very promising. It is noted that traditional animal identification in many cases
do not provide the adequate security and regulatory system for tracking. To date, there is no official database
or identification systems in place for tracking pet animals in cities which are in the process of transitioning to
a smart city.
As such, methods like ear-tagging, freeze-branding, ear-tattoos, ear-tipping, embedding microchips in the
body of pet animals (for identification purposes) do exist. However, these methods do not provide a very
high assurance of protection against theft or loss as these microchips, ear-tags, tattoos can be easily
replicated.

In keeping with these shortcomings, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Varanasi has proposed a low-cost
system (with no extra hardware) for monitoring of dogs based on their primary animal biometric identifiers.
This recognition system is able to identify dogs based on their biometric facial features. This system if
implemented will be non-invasive and humane and can help monitor pet animals in urban areas in real time.
This system is expected to have a 96.87% recognition rate among the dogs whose biometric details were fed
into the system.

One drawback of this system, as also acknowledged by the researchers at IIT-Varanasi, is that this system has
not been tested on the real data of dogs captured from the surveillance cameras, which can eventually help
detect loss or theft.
Future research in this area in IIT-Varanasi is expected to entail identification and verification of individual
pet animals in real time scenario, along with development of mobile apps and intelligent pet care and
verification systems based on IoT.
If this path-breaking system kicks-off and is successfully implemented in urban areas, it could also pave the
way for similar systems to be put into place for wildlife species too which can help control problems including
land encroachment and hunting.

Source: Kumar.S, Kumar Singh. S. Monitoring of pet animal in smart cities using animal biometrics.
Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology. Future Generation Computer
Systems. 2016

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