The India of Things: Tata Communications' countrywide IoT network aims to improve traffic, manufacturing, and health care

Abstract

The 20 million residents of mumbai slog through monstrous traffic jams during monsoon season. The heavy rains that last from June until August frequently choke off the flow of traffic through India's most populous city, leaving millions of Mumbaikars seething in their cars after a workday. • Though it's particularly bad during monsoon season, Mumbai's traffic is awful even on sunny days. And meanwhile, the number of vehicles in the city continues to grow. In 2012, there were just 2 million cars, scooters, and auto-rickshaws in Mumbai. Four years later, at the end of 2016 (the most recent year for which data is available), there were 3 million. • City planners are struggling to keep up. The city's total road length- about 2,000 kilometers-has remained stagnant over the years. More vehicles, crowded onto the same length of road, means that there are now more than 1,500 vehicles per kilometer of road. That's even worse than Los Angeles-infamous for its bad traffic-which, despite having far more cars (almost 6.5 million), has only about 600 vehicles per kilometer.