Context India is currently experiencing one of the most significant urban transformations of the 21st century. The nation’s growth ambitions depend on the ability of its cities to function as engines of economic development. However, the demands being placed on Indian cities are also growing. Many of the challenges that cities face today will be exacerbated by the impacts of climate change.To prepare for the future and meet the current challenges to living standards, Indian cities must undergo a transformation to avoid infrastructure bottlenecks and being locked into a future of high emissions, pollution, heat stress and frequent urban flooding. Frontier technologies can be important enablers in building urban systems that are more efficient and resilient to climate change. Objective Our community’s ambition is to support Indian cities in moving towards the following technology-enabled and climate-smart urban transformation objectives by 2035: Improve efficiency of the urban mobility system by a third and enable an energy transition in mobility.Make the built environment more efficient and reduce embodied and operational emissions from new buildings by a third. Halve the expected adverse per-capita climate impact of flooding, heat stress and pollution. Strategy Our multistakeholder community will create a consensus-driven holistic framework for how cities can plan to use frontier technologies for their climate-smart urban transformation. This framework will cover horizontal interventions around aspects such as: 1 Shared digital and physical infrastructure for a city’s climate-smart urban transformation 2 A public–private collaboration framework, procurement guidelines and principles for the application of frontier technologies to solve the city’s main challenges 3 Funding and business models for climate-smart urban transformation in the context of Indian cities 1 Climate-smart urban mobility Physical and digital infrastructure for mobility as a service (MaaS),8 intelligent traffic management, an interface to facilitate small energy transactions in the mobility transition (to enable vehicle-to-grid [V2G], battery aggregation, renewable energy integration, etc.).2 Climate-smart built environment Low-carbon construction technologies, advanced materials for construction, smart buildings, city and building digital twins for built-environment planning and management.3 Climate resilience of cities Predictive urban infrastructure maintenance with AI, data-driven warnings and interventions related to urban flooding, air pollution and heat stress.The framework will also include a detailed investigation of interventions covering climate mitigation in mobility and the built environment, and adaptations against adverse urban climate impacts: This framework will be further applied to a forward-looking city to support it in undertaking its technology-enabled, climate-smart urban transformation. 8. Maas Alliance. (n.d.). Mobility as a service? Retrieved November 25, 2024, from https://maas-alliance.eu/homepage/what-is-maas/. Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) India – an Impact Journey 41

C4IR India An Impact Journey 2025