CM Inaugurates Bhubaneswar Operations Centre For Effective Command & Control

Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday inaugurated the state-of-the art Bhubaneswar Operations Centre (BOC) and a slew of other projects in Odisha capital.

The first-of-its-kind centralised command and control centre will monitor, operate, and control existing services of the city. At present, Adaptive Traffic Signal System, tracking of buses and municipal vehicles along with grievance redressal system are being run from BOC.

According to official sources, the centre will be developed further to keep an eye on traffic management, incident management, city surveillance, emergency services and disaster management.

It includes a massive video wall of more than 80-foot length (with 16 x 2 configuration of 70 inch panels), which will be used to monitor the large volume of close circuit television (CCTV) footage and highly-sophisticated sensor data. It will provide a digital platform for integrating multiple city sub-systems of parking, public transport, and common payment card along with effective emergency response management for the city.

 The Chief Minister also inaugurated a city-wide adaptive traffic signal control system at AG Square here. The Solar Powered Adaptive Traffic Signal System is an intelligent and IT-based signalization of traffic intersections in the city and will include traffic signal control system along with provision of pelican signals and blinkers implemented on city-wide level.

 The latest Composite Signal Control Strategy (CoSiCoSt) technology, used here, has been developed by Trivandrum-based Centre for Development of Advanced Computing. It will ensure improved travel time reliability, reduction in congestion, distribution of green phase time equitably, faster response to traffic conditions, providing timely emergencies and support and predicting traffic volumes including adjustment to signal timings, among others.

The city now has 50 Intersections, eight Pelicans and five blinkers and these will be maintained by Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited for next seven years.

Besides, the CM also laid the foundation stone of a sensory park for children with special needs at Saheed Nagar. Designed by Bhubaneswar Urban Knowledge Centre (BUKC), the park will have ramps and facilities like sand pit and rubber flooring to curb the chances of any injuries on fall of children during play. For the visually-challenged children, there will be Braille and sound walls along with reflexology path specially created by integrating soil, grass and pebbles. The park will be developed over 4 acre at a cost of around Rs 1 crore.

Apart from those, Naveen also laid the foundation stone of an Integrated Public Service Centre (IPSC) at Bapuji Nagar. The IPSC will have components like bill payment centre, dispensary, crèche and community group space, ward office, multipurpose hall, library and reading room and skiling centre.

The centre will address the social and urban services needs of the immediate neighbourhoods and provide the required social space for community interaction. It will be developed over an area of 3 acre.

The design will have elements from the temples in Old Bhubaneswar. While there will be window mesh adopted from Mukteswar temple, elephant motifs are inspired from Parasurameswar temple.

Other projects that were inaugurated by the CM include the command and control centre for the city and the new Smart City Office on the fifth floor of BMC-Bhawani Mall at Saheed Nagar.