By Michael Taylor
BANDUNG, Indonesia, Sept 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A t the entrance to the spaceship-like command centre for the Indonesian city of Bandung, all workers remove their shoes before starting their shift, the better to keep the carpets clean.
Inside, operators ensure the city’s more than 300 mobile apps run smoothly and check what words are trending on social media in the city so that any problems are dealt with quickly and efficiently.
“Wild animals entering houses are the strangest complaints,” said social media operator Dyar Dwiqi. “Snakes, bees and squirrels. We call the fire department and let them handle it.”
“These types of things make the job more interesting,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The 24-hour command centre is just one of a series of changes launched over the last five years to try to boost sustainability, reduce climate-changing emissions and make Indonesia’s third-largest city more liveable.
Cities across the Asia-Pacific region have seen unprecedented growth over the last two decades. This year, the United Nations estimates that more than half the region’s population will for the first time be urban.
But as they grow, Asia’s cities also need to hold the line on – and try to cut back – their carbon pollution from things like transport, heating, cooling and waste.
Without that, the world will miss its goals – set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement – to curb global warming, exposing billions of people to more of the fiercer storms, deeper droughts, crop failures and other disasters the world is already seeing, scientists say.
To deal with the threat, rapidly expanding cities such as Bandung are testing technology aimed at both cutting their contribution to climate change and improving the lives of their citizens.
Other cities in Indonesia have experimented with green projects but urban experts say the number of changes, the speed of their implementation, and the innovative use of technology make Bandung stand out.
At the city’s pristine white command centre, designed by the tech-savvy mayor, for instance, 27 operators can check closed-circuit television feeds for traffic hot-spots, in an effort to ease congestion.
They can also use a public address system to chastise road users for using mobile phones or not wearing helmets.
“I enjoy my job,” said Dwiqi. “My job is important because it helps people connect with the government and services.”
