World Habitat Day 2022

By Miitesh Tanwani

The social animal of this planet is known to enhance his lifestyle constantly. Earlier at the inception of human life, men used to live in Caves wearing plantations as their protection and wood as their safety weapon. Soon as the evolution proceeded, the habitat was revamped into more comfortable dwellings where Caves gradually upgraded to villas and plantations translated into fabrics and processed food.

When life used to pass like a silent river in the early modern age and inventions of modern vehicles and equipment hadn’t started to burgeon much; ruralisation was the most adapted geography all over the globe. People used to live in a single-roof cottage with their extended family as housing was merely treated as a necessity to provide shelter. People were content to lie under the shade of a banyan tree for quenching their sweat. They were accountable for maintaining and nurturing the nature and environment around them. As soon as technology started erupting; from trade to travel, transport to habitat everything started to reform. As a result, the desires of the man and his patience started sharing an inverse proportionality; with desires on the numerator side of his life. And a new era of geographical adaptation; Urbanisation was born. Where most advanced and comfortable abodes were developed surrounded by trading centres and traders’ hubs, unlike rural places where lifestyle was solely dependent on agriculture and cattle. On one side, the population and technological inventions were rising exponentially and on the other side Urbanisation and over utilisation of natural resources was happening.

In search of a better lifestyle and highly reputed jobs, men begin flocking to urban areas where factories and merchant hubs were located. After one point that particular urban zone gets over populated and problems of adequate resources start to pop up. To counter this, men initiate deforestation, construct more building, and erect more factories and the crazy cycle of urbanisation goes on at the cost of the depletion of nature and natural resources. This brings a lot of demographics, environmental, economic and social challenges.

To counter this problem, United Nations initiated and passed the resolution to observe “World Habitat Day” every First Monday of October across the globe to create awareness, encourage participation, evoke and spread knowledge and collaborate with the global community in developing a Better and Sustainable Urban Future. In 2022, The theme of World Habitat Day is “Mind the Gap. Leave No One and Place Behind”, with the idea of picking up on the issues of inequality and challenges in Urban areas and human habitation. Due to the Pandemic, many people who were about to leave the poverty bracket have fallen into that again and a new lot of people have also joined the poverty bracket due to the loss of their employment, death of bread earner of their family, medical expenses etc. So, addressing Urban Indigence, Cultural inequality and all kinds of conflicts which are creating obstacles to a sustainable habitat is a global priority.

UN SDG (Sustainability development goals) have introduced a broad spectrum of SDG Goals which are discussed in the subsequent paras with a few possible solutions from the writer to reach to that goal that can help to achieve equality in basic infrastructure, food, health, roads and development.

Zero hunger

Approximately 811 million people go to bed without eating food every night, yet 1/3rd of the total food production gets wasted every day across the world.

With the help of Info-Comm technology (Systems using a hybrid of Information & Communication technology), an app can be built in containing database for those people who cannot manage to have food twice a day on their own as well as a database of restaurants, cafes and hotel owners who got the extra food on daily basis. A driverless car equipped with Data Analytics system and a representative would go to the location of that hotel for collecting that extra food every day at a pre-decided time and distribute the food to the needy people who already subscribed to that Info-Comm technology and registered to get the food for that particular day.

Health and well being

23% of deaths are caused by environmental issues (Cancer, tuberculosis, Hypertension, cardiovascular disease). Over 40% of people don’t get to drink clean drinking water leading to problems like typhoid, cholera, hepatitis B etc.

Periodic Free health check-ups and treatments by local governments in their villages, talukas and districts can ensure the well-being of the citizens.

Promoting a healthy lifestyle by local government and educating the citizens about the importance of exercise, yoga and healthy eating habits can help to achieve the awareness agenda. It can also be done by organising Fun events, Marathons, Educational competitions and Exhibition fairs on days such as International Yoga Day, Environment Day, Children’s Day etc.

Quality Education

Education doesn’t change the world; but education changes the lives of the people which brings a change in the world. Education is the basis of every change, still 781 million people don’t know how to read and write.

Government’s No discrimination policy w.r.t class, caste or gender in any school which can help everyone to get an equitable and quality primary as well as secondary education. And for any Field of Education; everybody irrespective of their gender/sexual orientation will get an equal opportunity and access to all the required resources.

Private universities should start offering Free or Discounted fees for students whose annual family income is less than a certain Predefine income on academic merits. Scholarship based access to technical, vocational, and tertiary education including university to develop relevant skills for decent employment and entrepreneurship.

Donation of textbooks, and old books which a person no longer required to educational institutions so that the needy person can use them.

These steps will promote and facilitate more literacy in the country which will eventually produce great engineers, doctors, architects, IT specialists and most importantly responsible human beings which will indirectly contribute to the Sustainable & greener future.

Sustainable cities and communities.

Around 60% of the world’s GDP is contributed by cities. People are flocking to cities from villages and small towns in search of jobs and better lifestyles. This results in overcrowding of cities, sanitisation problems and situations like Covid-19 making it a Severe contaminated zone due to the limited amount of Health and inefficient urban structures.

Concept of Smart Cities for Villages, Semi- Rural & Rural Areas and Concept of Smart planning for Already Developed and Rural Cities is the efficacious way out to curb the above-mentioned problem.

Affordable Housing.

Government of India has launched many initiatives to eradicate slums from the country and make Housing Affordable for everyone. PM-AWAS Yojana was launched in 2015 which ensures 20 million homes by the end of 2022. Under this Yojana EWS (Economically weaker section) & LIG (Lower income group) family who do not own any Pukka home in India and falls under the total annual income bracket of 3 lakhs and 6 lakhs respectively will get home loan at very subsidise rate.

And Builders constructing the homes under PM-AWAS yojana will get Tax Holiday, which makes it a win-win situation for both Buyer & seller. Such initiatives can improve & revamp the habitats form many people in the country.

Smart Cities (Rural Area)

Smart cities are equipped with Smart systems which consists of Information- Communication (Info-Comm), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IOT) and Data Engineered systems.

A Smart city functions like a human body; where we have Green natural parks which works like lungs to purify the air, Roads amidst the Parks are like arteries and Veins, Buildings where activities take place like muscles in our body and Five senses in our body is similar to Data collection from the the city so that our systems

can learn, adapt and become smart. Solar panels at every building’s roof top to generate electricity just like our brain & smart lightening systems in the whole town just like our eyes.

Smart Analysis – Engineers will collect the data about the town (Buildings, Parks, Roads, Water bodies, Energy use, wastage etc) and feed into the Smart system. It will process and present a simulated model of the whole city which will give insights about various parameters like:

1. Natural Ventilation of air in different area, this will help us to minimize the use of Air conditioners.

2. Shadow Analysis to see the shadow movement in the town for the whole day so that the architect can have the idea to decide where to put the Children’s parks, Outdoor dining areas, Playgrounds, Outdoor Amphitheatres etc.

3. Solar Irradiance in a town which gives insights about the areas receiving Severe sunshine where engineers can install more Solar panels (above buildings), and areas receiving low to moderate sunshine where architects can construct Roof Garden, Roof cafes etc.

4. Climate friendly sensors in all buildings which will give timely updates about temperature, humidity, wind-flows in all seasons; this data will get feed into the smart system to improve its accuracy.

Smart Planning (Urban Area)

As developed and Urban cities are already crowded with people, so we can focus on replacing the existing systems with more efficient & technological smart systems without changing the infrastructure of building or road much.

1. Replacing existing elevators with Regenerative and sensor-based elevators to save energy and detect the future technical problems through sensing and analysing every day’s vibrational load and energy consumption.

2. Installing Solar Panel on every building’s roof top and replacing street lights with solar panel-based Smart LED lights.

3. Sensor based solar panels to check the energy collection, Weather report (if energy collection is low that means weather is cloudy or rainy) or need for the repair/ maintenance of that solar panel (if there is zero energy collection).

4. Introducing Rain water harvesting tanks in every household so that Collected rain water can be utilised well.

5. Converting high rise buildings & towers into Vertical Greenery Architecture and having green roof top on the terrace to tackle pollution and ensure cool air.

6. Automatic lightening systems with sensors in all buildings which tracks the daily consumption of the energy and adjust the brightness of the light
   

according to the presence of humans around and gets turn off in absence of any human or moving object.

1. Smart living equipment for Elderly care: If the care taker is working outside to earn the livelihood for the family and his/her older parent is at home alone, in that case we need to take assistance from technology as a backup in absence of any human assistance around. So, there are CCTV equipped smart tracking devices which will track the movements of the elderly person in the home for the entire day and captures the pattern of his/her walking, moving, sleeping, eating, drinking etc.

The working care taker who is outside the home can also see his parent through his mobile which is in sync with the CCTV via internet. If the working pattern of the older parent gets broken someday or if there are any major fluctuations in the pattern, then it will immediately send the alarming signal to that working care taker who is outside the home and corrective actions can be taken at right time.

1. Energy efficient home appliances which can track daily energy consumption and make changes in their working according. (For example, if you keep the Air conditioner at 18° and you got asleep, a Smart Air-conditioner will automatically change its temperature at 24° to save the energy).

Discussed above are just a few of many solutions and if Citizens and Government collaborate and brain storm, numerous other solutions can also be explored. It can then assist to plan and implement the Inclusive policies for achieving the Sustainable Development goals (SDG). This will significantly help to make Cities; Inclusive, Safe, resiliently sustainable and reduced the gap between polarized socio-economic classes, leaving no-one behind in true essence”.

By Miitesh Tanwani