Dr. Chinmay Hegde, Co-Founder, CEO, and Managing Director of Astrikos.ai, discusses the pressing challenges that cities face today in terms of sustainability, and how can AI help address them to make the cities more sustainable and livable.
Enterprise Times: What unique solutions does Astrikos.ai bring to the smart city ecosystem, particularly in the areas of resource management, transportation, and public safety?
Dr. Chinmay Hegde: Astrikos.ai’s solution revolutionizes smart city operations by optimizing resource management and fostering a culture of eco-consciousness. By shifting operations from planned to predictive, it empowers sustainable decision-making, improves asset uptime and durability, and enhances transparency and predictability. The platform also streamlines workforce planning and management, contributing to efficient and effective operations.
Focused on Smart Cities and Digital Urban Spaces, Astrikos.ai’s solutions enable smarter, more sustainable urban living and facility management. The AI-enabled Intelligence Platform is particularly transformative in transportation and public safety. By leveraging real-time data from traffic cameras and GPS devices, it delivers actionable insights into traffic flow, congestion hotspots, pedestrian density, and high-risk zones across cities.
Key benefits include:
- Dynamic Traffic Management: Predicting and alleviating congestion through the congestion chokepoint analysis and outcomes will be deployed through adaptive traffic light control.
- Urban Safety and Accident Prevention: Identifying high-risk intersections using traffic pattern analysis and historical accident data, with preventive recommendations.
- Enhanced Urban Mobility: Enabling seamless vehicle movement and safer pedestrian environments.
Astrikos.ai’s innovative approach significantly improves urban safety and operational efficiency, making cities more resilient and livable.
Enterprise Times: In your experience, what are the most pressing challenges that cities face today in terms of sustainability, and how can AI help address them?
Dr. Chinmay Hegde: Cities today face significant sustainability challenges that demand immediate attention and innovative solutions. Intense traffic congestion remains a critical issue, disrupting mobility, increasing fuel consumption, and contributing to urban air pollution. The inefficiency in waste disposal and sanitation further exacerbates environmental degradation, while air and water pollution pose severe risks to public health. Climate change adds another layer of complexity, threatening built infrastructure like buildings, roads, and essential facilities with extreme weather events. Additionally, traditional building designs consume excessive energy and water and contribute significantly to carbon dioxide emissions, intensifying the need for sustainable urban planning.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers transformative solutions to address these challenges. In transportation, AI algorithms can optimize traffic flow, predict congestion, and dynamically manage vehicle movement to improve efficiency and reduce emissions. Machine learning tools perform geo-temporal analyses of traffic patterns, enabling better urban planning by identifying congestion zones. By integrating geospatial digital twin models into existing traffic management systems, city planners can leverage real-time data for informed decision-making, enhancing public safety and mobility.
Leveraging insights from IoT devices and sensors, city administrators can monitor air and water quality, manage noise pollution, and improve waste management practices, fostering a healthier urban environment.
AI also plays a pivotal role in climate resilience by predicting natural disasters such as floods or heatwaves, allowing urban planners to implement proactive measures and ensure timely evacuations. Energy efficiency is another critical area where AI contributes significantly. By analyzing consumption patterns and identifying wastage zones, AI-driven systems can implement conservation measures to reduce energy use and carbon footprints. Furthermore, AI enhances energy management in smart cities by optimizing energy storage and grid reconfiguration, predicting system failures, and enabling the seamless integration of renewable energy sources like solar and wind. These technologies not only reduce costs but also support the transition to more sustainable and resilient urban living.
Through its diverse applications, AI has the potential to transform cities into smarter, more sustainable spaces, addressing current challenges while paving the way for future-ready urban ecosystems.
Enterprise Times: Astrikos.ai is already working abroad, how do the challenges faced by these regions compare to those in India, and how is AI addressing them?
Dr. Chinmay Hegde: The sustainability challenges faced by cities worldwide share similarities with those in India, such as traffic congestion, pollution, and the need for climate resilience. However, regional differences arise due to variations in urban development, population density, climate conditions, and economic priorities.
India struggles with issues like resource scarcity, waste management, and urban sprawl. However, India is the best test bed as it poses the scale that challenges any technological implementation. If you meet the scale in India, you meet the scale everywhere.
In contrast, regions like MENA, APAC, and the Americas face distinct challenges. In the MENA region, air pollution is a significant environmental issue, exacerbated by sand and dust storms from desert areas, alongside rapid urbanization and infrastructure development. Additionally, water scarcity is a pressing challenge, with limited freshwater resources and heavy reliance on energy-intensive desalination. The region’s dependence on fossil fuels for energy further compounds carbon emissions and environmental degradation. AI helps by enabling smart water management systems, integrating renewable energy, and utilizing predictive tools for climate resilience. AI-powered geospatial models and IoT devices can optimize urban planning and resource allocation to enhance sustainability.
The APAC region faces rapid urbanization, resource depletion, and the impacts of climate change. Urban infrastructure struggles to keep pace with population growth, resulting in congestion and pollution. AI assists by supporting traffic management, waste recycling, and real-time disaster forecasting. AI-driven energy systems can also promote the transition to renewable energy, advancing sustainability goals.
In the Americas, especially North America, aging infrastructure, urban sprawl, extreme weather conditions, climate change, and rising carbon emissions present significant challenges. AI enhances disaster prediction models, improve energy efficiency in urban buildings, and helps mitigate the environmental impact of these issues.
Enterprise Times: How does Astrikos.ai collaborate with governments and stakeholders to implement AI-driven solutions in cities?
Dr. Chinmay Hegde: Astrikos.ai works closely with the respective governments and stakeholders in several ways. We conduct awareness workshops and training programs for government officials and urban planners where we also showcase the capabilities and limitations of AI. We participate in awareness events and organize cyber hygiene workshops for policymakers. We collaborate with academia to bridge the skills gap and drive innovation in the field. Our collaborations include tailored training programs and internships for students. Our team also provides ongoing support to ensure the maintenance of AI systems installed in government agencies as part of urban infrastructure
Enterprise Times: What do you envision as the next major breakthrough in AI for smart cities?
Dr. Chinmay Hegde: Going forward, AI will focus on sustainability as AI-based solutions optimize environmental performance. The technology will be playing a major role in tackling aging infrastructure. AI will be able to recommend new designs for cities, and smart urban planning so that we are more climate resilient. AI-powered solutions can increasingly provide analytics on cross-functional recommendations such as exercise activities based on the health of a person or diet among others. AI can help using data from surveillance cameras, social media, and other sources to predict where crimes might occur or where emergencies might arise (keeping in mind data privacy policy). AI for smart cities will be a seamless, interconnected, and adaptive.
