Surat urban service monitoring system wins UN competition

A project aimed at monitoring and grievance redressal for health, water supply and solid waste services in Surat in Gujarat has been selected as a winner of a UN-led Climate Challenge competition for highlighting innovative uses of big data.
The Urban Service Monitoring System (UrSMS) project is among seven winners of the "Projects to Watch" in the The Big Data Climate Challenge, a global competition hosted by UN Global Pulse, an initiative of Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon on big data.
The project was designed under the Asian Cities Climate Resilience Network (ACCCRN) for improving the monitoring and grievance redressal for health, water supply, sewerage and solid waste services.

It is developed by consultancy firm Taru in collaboration with Surat Municipal Corporation and Urban Health Climate Resilience Centre (UHCRC) in India.
The winners of the Climate Challenge were announced as part of a buildup to the UN Secretary-General's Climate Summit on September 23 here.
The winners include a monitoring system that provides real-time information on forests, and a tool for farmers in Colombia that promotes climate-smart agriculture.

The winners will be invited to attend the climate summit.
The challenge was launched in May 2014 to unearth fresh evidence of the economic dimensions of climate change around the world using data and analytics.

Submissions were received from 40 countries, representing more than 20 topics from forestry, biodiversity and transportation to renewable energy and green data centres.
Two overall Big Data Climate Challenge winners and seven Projects to Watch were selected by a high-level Advisory Board and Technical Committee of global experts in climate science, sustainable development and big data.
The Projects to Watch were chosen to highlight particularly innovative uses of big data in emerging topics and geographic regions.