In response to the Covid-19 challenges, Google in collaboration with Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Thursday launched a new feature ‘COVID-19 layer’ on Maps that displays the demarcation of containment zones in Mumbai.
According to Google, it is working closely with the BMC for sourcing this information and will update this data regularly. BMC has embraced technology and analytics from the very beginning. The civic body not just monitors important metrics to drive effective interventions and efficiencies but also makes them easily available to all the relevant government departments, health sector and essential service providing agencies.
Most importantly, BMC has been at the forefront in keeping citizens informed and providing relevant information and trends, transparently and seamlessly through its dedicated website for this cause.
With BMC being the originator of the solution framework, it is first in the world to help surface containment zones and other relevant information about Mumbai on Google Maps. BMC touts that Google realised the potential of this idea and that they have now created a platform for other cities across the globe to do what BMC has done with them. Several optimisations have already happened, and more will continue to happen over time. The ward teams provide the relevant information which is then converted into shapefiles which will be available as an opensource file for anyone to consume.
BMC and Google have done other work recently to help quickly find relevant Covid-19 related information about Mumbai.