IN: PCMC chief directs officials to take over Smart City projects by March 31
Pimpri Chinchwad municipal commissioner Shravan Hardikar has directed civic officials to take over all ongoing and completed projects implemented under the Smart City Mission by March 31.
A senior PCMC official told TOI that once the decision is implemented, the Smart City Mission office will cease to exist, and all projects will be formally handed over to the respective departments of the civic body for execution and maintenance.
Building AI-ready cities: from pilots to public trust
From data foundations and ethical guardrails to workforce skills and citizen trust, the challenge is no longer whether to use AI in cities – but how to embed it in ways that are practical, human-centred, and built to last.
For cities around the world, artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a distant experiment or a speculative future. It is rapidly becoming a defining capability of modern government. Yet while the technology itself moves fast, the work of integrating it into public services is slow, complex, and deeply human. The real challenge is not whether AI can do something, but how cities build the foundations, rules, skills, and trust needed to use it responsibly and at scale.
Smart cities prioritise ROI and operational savings
At a glance
- Who: Berg Insight.
- What: The IoT market research provider has published its latest Smart Cities: Connected Public Spaces report, which shows how smart cities are prioritising ROI and operational savings and service when it comes to implementing digital solutions.
- Why: To provide insight and intelligence across the smart city sector, focusing on areas such as smart street lighting, smart parking, smart waste collection, urban air quality monitoring and smart city surveillance.
- When: The report includes data from 2024 usage and implementations and includes five-year industry forecasts and expert commentary.
Latest research from Berg Insight finds cities want digital solutions that deliver tangible outcomes, marking a shift away from tech-led experimentation.
China launches world’s first AI large-model satellite for smart cities, advancing intelligent remote sensing
China launched seven satellites with a single rocket from waters off Yangjiang in South China's Guangdong Province on Thursday. Among them is CUHK No.1, which is the world's first artificial intelligence (AI) large-model satellite designed for urban sustainable development, according to local authorities and the satellite's developer.
The satellite innovatively integrates high-resolution remote sensing with AI, effectively deploying a large model into space and marking a new milestone in China's intelligent remote-sensing satellite technology, industrial analysts said.
IQ: KRG launches e-Psule digital platform for paying government bills
Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on Tuesday inaugurated a new digital payment platform that allows citizens to pay government bills electronically through participating banks, as part of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) push toward digital transformation.
The platform, called e-Psule - meaning bill in Kurdish - has been approved by the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI), with Deloitte appointed to audit its payment processes. A KRG statement said the system, launched under Barzani’s supervision, “is a unified national system for delivering government bills digitally.”