Desi designer helps make Danish capital smart

Which is the world’s smartest city? While the question may be a contentious one, with at least a dozen cities laying claim to the title, Copenhagen is widely recognised as one of the top contenders.

While the Danish capital is smart is several aspects — from the way it supplies water to its growing population to how it got nearly half its citizens to cycle — its greatest achievements include its green initiatives and traffic management. Helping the city in these endeavours is Vinay Venkatraman, founder and CEO of Leapcraft, a design-driven innovation consultancy start-up based in Copenhagen. Venkatraman, who is now helping shape policy initiatives for the Danish government, has, in the past, handled product strategy for companies such as Nokia, Intel, Novo Nordisk, Maersk Line, Lufthansa Technik and Philips Lighting.

Among Leapcraft’s current projects are two for smart cities. “Copenhagen Sense (CPH Sense), a solution to monitor air quality (and also sound now) has been developed over the past three years and is live with various deployments in Denmark,” Venkatraman told BusinessLine via e-mail. “It’s a fairly mature solution that is ready for scale and we are currently expanding it to various markets globally.”

The sensing platform can measure outdoor air quality in a simple and scalable way. “Cities worldwide are concerned about air quality and its impact on both health and quality of life. We enable both governmental and private stakeholders to measure and benchmark the air they breathe,” said Venkatraman.

The other platform is Copenhagen Intelligent Traffic Solutions (CITS), which Leapcraft, CITILUM and the Danish Technical University have developed in collaboration with Cisco and Silver Spring. “As part of the CITS project, we have installed a mesh network of Wi-Fi access points that have the capability of geo locating Wi-Fi- enabled devices on the streets without compromising privacy,” explained Venkatraman.

The data is aggregated, anonymised and fed into a cloud-based software dashboard. With this, city officials can monitor traffic conditions in real time and run simulations. The dashboard can categorise traffic, look for patterns and identify behavioural tendencies among road users. Officials can also detect correlations between traffic conditions and other influences such as weather, road works and special events.

While CITS is still under development, CPH Sense can be immediately deployed in India, said Venkataraman. “India would be very interesting for this, especially given how complex the air quality issues are.”

“We feel it can easily be applied in Indian cities as it gives high-quality data for a fraction of the cost of the existing system,” he further said. “More importantly, it’s designed to be rugged, run on solar power and connect via cellular networks for data link.” Venkatraman, who did his schooling in various parts of India, got a bachelor’s in Industrial Design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, and a master’s in Interaction Design from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, in Italy.

He lived in Italy for a few years before moving to Denmark in 2006 to co-found the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID). “I sold my shares in CIID about three years ago to found Leapcraft,” recalled Venkatraman.

He and his wife Priya are also behind a non-profit initiative called Frugal Digital — a collaborative group that researches methods to create low-cost digital solutions for developing economies.

With India embarking on the Smart Cities project in a big way, has any government or private agency sought Leapcraft’s help?

“We have not been approached by any Indian agency yet, but would love to find a way to reach out.”

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