Page 6 - Smart public health emergency management and ICT implementations - A U4SSC deliverable on city platforms

Executive summary

The world is currently facing an unprecedented situation owing to the Covid-19 coronavirus
pandemic, which has impacted all avenues of life. Cities with growing populations have been
adversely affected with significant loss of life. Despite being on the smart city transition trajectory
with a variety of ICT solutions being used to fight the virus, several cities have been unable to
effectively deal with the pandemic.

Smart sustainable cities (SSC), predicated on ICT-based innovation, are capable of fostering data-
driven smart applications to manage limited resources and implement them to thwart the advent
of future pandemics of the same magnitude. In the context of Sustainable Development Goal
3 (Global Heath) and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, public health-related
disasters form a core concern. Additionally, the concept of “resilience” is also elucidated in
Sustainable Development Goal 1 (Poverty Eradication) and Goal 11 (Make cities inclusive, safe,
resilient and sustainable).

In this scenario, linking the smart city endeavours to manage future pandemics/epidemics to the
attainment of the SDGs serves a dual purpose. With the utilization of appropriate emergency
communication and public health frameworks, it will become easier to develop models to predict
the spread of diseases, ascertain the source of illnesses, coordinate lockdowns, detect and report
symptoms, identify viral strains and provide remote assistance (as required with limited human
interaction) through an IoT-based infrastructure.

Based on this premise, this document explores the context of public health and the importance of
active surveillance mechanisms in the urban ecosystem to enable emerging communications for
public health disasters and the incorporation of IoT, AI and data-driven frameworks to provide timely
responses to epidemics and pandemics, while implementing generic public health operational
processes derived from the methodologies adopted for past crises. Moreover, this document
concludes with a smart public health framework, which utilizes these tools, defines a pandemic
lifecycle and specifies when mass surveillance tools are applied (for dealing with the outbreak).

iv U4SSC: Smart public health emergency management and ICT implementations