Government of India has recently launched Smart City Mission with an objective to promote cities that provide core infrastructure, provide a reasonable quality of life to its citizens and ensures a clean and sustainable environment, integrating application of ‘smart’ solutions for ease of business and governance.

A city has more of ‘built environment’ than the natural environment. The “built environment’ encompasses places and spaces created or modified by people including buildings, parks, and transportation systems and hence in the quest towards Smart Cities we need to address how we shape buildings in our cities. It is not enough for a building to simply contain the systems that provide space, comfort, light and safety, but the future buildings should deliver useful building services that make occupants productive such that the building incurs the lowest cost and creates the least environmental impact.

A smart building is one that achieves significant energy savings by taking advantage of improved technology and materials; achieves significant water savings through effective water management and provides quality indoor space in terms of daylight & thermal comfort with least cost. Reaching this vision requires adding intelligence from the beginning of building design right up to the end of the building’s useful life. Further, making a building sustainable, will mean that the building design, construction, and services will provide for cleaner and green environment and will help in decreasing the load on city’s infrastructure. Thus sustainable and smart buildings are crucial in the success of smart cities.