World Economic Forum lauds the tech use of BBMP Covid-19 war room

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has applauded and appreciated the Covid-19 war room of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagere Palike (BBMP) for its utilization of technology to fight the battle of Covid-19.

In a comprehensive report released by WEF titled ‘Technology and Data Governance in the Cities: Indian Cities at the Forefront of the Fight Against Covid-19’ which includes six municipalities – Bengaluru Urban, Surat, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Tel Aviv, Lisbon and New York City, the WEF has acknowledged the tech use of BBMP’s war room.

The report has appreciated the dashboard of the Covid-19 war room, which was formulated by the assistance of the scientists from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), along with that telecare facilities, monitors for the containment zones and mobile helps for managing the patient’s records was of great help to coordinate volunteers and also helped residents based in containment zones to file a complaint.

The report mentions about how the city was not set for the sudden growth of Covid-19 cases and had to immediate actions to match up the challenge. For er BBMP Commissioner, B H Anil Kumar, who set up the war room revealed to Deccan Herald about when the outbreak was pacing up by March end, BBMP did not have any adequate resources to monitor the pandemic.

With last minute set-up of hardware from Pro-Digital, the war room was set-up two days prior to the national lockdown. Kumar said, “The war room was a tool which allowed us, for example, to get 1,000 people into a conference call at once, which meant we could simultaneously engage with NGOs and RWAs. This was vital to quarantine enforcement.”

He further said, “An analysis meant we could execute strategies in the containment zones we were putting up.”

When the cases were at the peak, the war room staff as 25 – 50 in number, and several IT professionals backed it up from work from home.

Hephsiba Korlapati, Special Commissioner, BBMP, termed the war room as a “seamless coordination between government, academic and the private sector.”

She further added, “If we wanted an expert to work with us for a week the heads of the IT companies would deploy that expert with us. We also had KAS probationers, IISc data experts and Public Health experts from St. John’s,” iterating on the support given by Infosys, PWC, Quantella, ESRI India and CWC India along with Microsoft.

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