Nikhil Bhalerao
Project overview
India is experiencing an astonishingly rapid shift in the movement of people from rural to urban centers. What if we showed you how Jacobs and Aurangabad Industrial Township Limited are promising India’s residents new pathways to economic vitality and vibrant urban living, with creative reconnection to its golden past?
Relocating into city centers offers better jobs and the promise of fresh opportunity, but rapid urbanization in Indian cities – like many other cities around the world – has left leaders grappling with a host of new challenges such as limited infrastructure, from housing to public spaces; congested roadways; water supply challenges; and pollution.
But what if we showed you how Jacobs and AITL are integrating smart technologies and next-level infrastructure to change one Indian city into a smart, green industrial city of the future, from the ground up?
A smart city is one that maximizes efficient use of resources – land, water and energy – reduces impacts on the environment and enhances livability, enabling the city to remain competitive in the global market.
A new era of growth
Situated along the historic Silk Road, one of antiquity’s most important routes for international trade, AURIC (short for Aurangabad Industrial City) is one of the first smart cities planned along this golden corridor, aspiring to promote a healthy quality of life and spur India’s industrial revolution while embracing the region’s rich cultural past.
Jacobs began serving as the program manager for this smart city, which will feature a transit-oriented and walkable township, water and energy conservation, renewable power sources, information and communication technologies (ICT) and a city command and control center, in 2015.
In the beginning of 2018, Jacobs signed an extension of services to continue developing integrated infrastructure for this smart city, a world-class exhibition and convention center and a multi-modal logistics park, aligning physical and digital infrastructure to harness benefits provided by Internet of Things (IoT)- enabled solutions. The integrated industrial township will be a congregation of office spaces, residences, hotels, large and small format retail, hospitals, schools, parks, entertainment hubs and other land uses. More than 60 percent of the total land has been utilized for industrial purposes, while 40 percent is for residential, commercial, institutions, open spaces and social-cultural amenities.
Providing a pathway to prosperity
ICT will play a key role in integrating various functions to keep AURIC operating smoothly. An intelligent, 100 percent online e-governance system will digitize procedures and utilize analytics and real-time monitoring to ensure citizens enjoy an efficient, future-ready lifestyle. The integrated ICT platform will provide smart traffic management, a smart grid and smart housing, that will connect the community with the rest of the world through high-speed communications.
Additionally, AURIC will use high-grade, cost-efficient power from a combination of conventional and renewable resources to ensure industries, businesses and homes have an affordable, resilient energy supply. The city will also feature India’s first underground cabling system for industrial use, ensuring reliability of power with efficient supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system architecture, and by using sustainable water-management practices, water will be recycled for industrial uses throughout the city.
A smart city model to fuel the future
।As the city expands into a major manufacturing region, it will help attract a highly skilled workforce and generate direct employment for over 330,000 thousand people – fueling tremendous economic growth and a thriving, vibrant community to live, work and play.
The city’s state-of-the-art smart technologies, along with its sustainable infrastructure focused on clean, reusable and recycling methodologies, serves as a model for growing the country’s technological depth in manufacturing, while providing new opportunities for helping people across geographies to compete, collaborate and co-create a better future for all.
AURIC has already garnered several awards for its breakthroughs in innovation and efficiency, including:
- 2018 Environmental Business Journal Technology Merit award for Smart Cities
- SKOCH Platinum Smart City Platinum Award 2017
- SKOCH Order of Merit Award 2017 for E-Land Management System
- Times National Award 2017 – Best office Building (Auric City Hall Building)
- Times National Award 2017– Best in Architecture for AURIC City Hall (Auric City Hall Building)
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