STUDY ON CONCEPT OF SMART CITY AND ITS STRUCTURAL COMPONENTS

A smart city uses digital technologies to enhance performance and wellbeing, to reduce costs and resource consumption, and to engage more effectively and actively with its citizens. Key ‘smart' sectors include transport, energy, health care, water and waste. A smart city should be able to respond faster to city and global challenges than one with a simple ‘transactional' relationship with its citizens. The smart cities should be able to provide good infrastructure such as water, sanitation, reliable utility services, health care; attract investments; transparent processes that make it easy to run a commercial activities; simple and on line processes for obtaining approvals, and various citizen centric services to make citizens feel safe and happy. According to Frost and Sullivan report, 60% of the world's population is expected to live in urban environment by 2025. It is expected that around 26 global cities and more than 90 sustainable cities will develop, which leads to the vast consumption of the world's resources. The increased growth of smart cities will drive the need to innovate and provide solutions to foster convergence within the city. The smart city market is growing, especially with the rapid rate of urbanization taking place, with the market expected to be a $1.5 trillion by 2020. The significant growth presents certain challenges for organizations and city authorities.