The main challenges towards building a "Smart Bangladesh" are formulating proper policies and integrating government and academic entities and service providers, said experts yesterday. "There should be an integrated policymaking collaboration between telecom and ICT ministries, operators for a Smart Bangladesh," said Prof Satya Prasad Majumder, vice-chancellor of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet).
Clean air is important for everyone’s health. Yet, studies show that many people are disproportionately impacted by air pollution, including those who live in low-income communities. Exposure to poor air quality has been found to cause short- and long-term health effects, especially for older adults, children and pregnant women. The health burden of air pollution is higher for those living in areas of poor air quality. Residents of low-income neighbourhoods and communities may be more vulnerable to air pollution because of their proximity to air pollution sources such as factories, major roadways and ports with diesel truck operations. They also may be more susceptible to air pollution because of social and economic factors. Air pollution in Bangladesh is the worst in the world, reducing the average Bangladeshi’s life expectancy by 6.7 years, as a study shows.
New realities have arisen in the last two years, and new strategies have been adopted by economies around the world to cope with the changed realities. Renewed significance has been attached to digital transformation and equipping the population with the right set of skills to prepare them for the new world has been a priority; and with over 4.6 billion people, the Asia Pacific region has been doing considerably well in terms of digital transformation.
The pandemic has expedited this process by about seven years. As one of the major players in the region, Bangladesh is also doing considerably well as far as digital preparedness is concerned.
Read more: BD: Upskilling youth can speed up digital transformation
Bangladesh’s communication service providers (CSPs) can help deploy high-performance networks required to turbo-charge their growth
Bangladesh is placing innovation at the heart of its socioeconomic transformation.
Guided by Digital and Smart Bangladesh initiatives, the government is now driven to turn the country into a high-income nation under Vision 2041.
Read more: Advancing Bangladesh with 5G and state-of-the-art networks
In an unprecedented move, the parliamentary standing committee on housing and public works ministry has directly recommended a major development project—to build an offshore smart city claiming land from the Bay of Bengal—directly to the prime minister.
The offshore smart city project involves the development of a seaside bayview smart city on a stretch of 60 square kilometres of land connecting Sagarika Point of the Patenga Beach with the Bangabandhu Shilpa Nagar in Mirsarai. A consortium of two local companies—The Peninsula Chittagong and Mazumder Enterprise—and two Chinese companies— China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) and China Railway Design Corporation (CRDC)—are pushing for the approval of this project. In return for stake in the smart city, the consortium has also proposed to build a 20.5-kilometre metro rail line in the port city, which would cost about USD 2.2 billion.
Read more: BD: Bay of Bengal: A not-so-smart proposal for an offshore smart city