Here’s how Pimpri Chinchwad is using its War Room to track COVID-19


A COVID-19 War Room has been set at Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) to track and monitor the COVID-19 situation in the city. Under the Smart Cities mission, technology solutions have been adopted at the War Room for collecting, collating and analysing data to generate actionable insights and aid in prompt decision-making.

Also read: Command and Control Centres help in monitoring COVID-19 cases

Also read: COVID-19: Lessons from Asian Cities 

The following dashboards are in operation at the PCMC War Room:

Healthcare and Patient Tracking Dashboard: PCMC has developed a dashboard which provides real-time information on COVID-related cases, testing and healthcare arrangements. Each hospital has been provided access to the dashboard via a dedicated online form, wherein, the information is filled by each of the hospital unit which gets updated on a real-time basis on the dashboard at the Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC). This dashboard tracks data from 10 hospitals providing COVID treatment to provide regular updates on parameters such as – bed capacity, sample testing, positive and quarantine cases.

COVID-19 GIS Dashboard: This is a location-based information system used to geotag – people who are home quarantined (purple colour dots on map), last location of COVID-19 positive persons (red drop marks), area cordoning (black lines), lane closure, etc. Once a patient is found to be COVID-19 positive, his/her last location of stay is marked on the dashboard. Similarly, all home quarantined persons are marked on the map. This information is used to generate a heat map, which helps classify areas from low risk to high risk. This dashboard is also used to identify epicentres of COVID-19 cases, which helps the Health Department to identify locations for immediate spraying of disinfectants. The same information is used by the Medical Department to send out special Task Forces for carrying out door-to-door campaigns and identifying if there are more cases. This geographical information assists in identifying the areas for condoning-off to contain any further spread. The GIS Dashboard and City Surveillance Dashboard have a pan-city reach.


City Surveillance Dashboard: A total of 298 ‘point-tilt-zoom’ surveillance cameras are installed at 85 locations across PCMC jurisdiction to monitor the activities. A dashboard of this surveillance system is set up at ICCC and is jointly monitored by PCMC and Pimpri-Chinchwad Police. PCMC is also initiating video analytics, which will provide alerts in case crowd gathering of more than three people is spotted by the surveillance cameras at any of the locations. Additional similar interventions are being explored and will be implemented subsequently.

SARATHI Helpline Dashboard: PCMC has a dedicated helpline platform viz, SARATHI (System of Assisting Residents and Tourist through Helpline Information), wherein, citizens can request for any assistance with respect to service delivery. All calls received through the helpline are saved as an audio file and also documented with respect to the date and nature of request, responsible department and zone, status of closure of request. A dashboard of SARATHI is set up at ICCC, which provides analytics on: Major request or complaints from citizens, request or complaint redressal status, zone-wise request or complaints, etc.

In a matter of just two weeks – the PCMC SMART SARATHI app has more than 30,000 downloads, Twitter followers have tripled and Facebook followers have almost doubled. All COVID-19 patients and quarantined persons are tracked from the War Room.

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