Bhubaneswar, May 30: The city is set to have a state-of-the-art intelligent city operation management centre to integrate a number of services crucial to making the life of citizens better.

To be managed by a consultant chosen by the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), the centre would focus on traffic management, parking, bus operations, emergency response and crisis management, integrating these services through a digital platform.

"We have invited proposals from interested agencies for the job of consultant for the smart city project. The centre, which the consultant would manage, would deal with an array of services," said a BMC official.

City mayor Ananta Narayan Jena said the upcoming centre would act as a control room functioning 24X7 to facilitate real-time incident management, inter-sector collaboration and service delivery.

"This would also facilitate evidence-based decision making and responsive operational control," said Jena, adding that the process of executing all smart city-related projects was being expedited.

"We topped the first list of 20 cities to be made into smart cities released by the Centre and then we earned the distinction of becoming the first city in the country to constitute the special-purpose vehicle for executing various projects under the smart city scheme. We want to maintain our momentum and selection of the consultant for the state-of-the-art centre is part of it," said Jena.

Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA), the other government agency involved in the smart city project, is in the process of preparing detailed project reports for various projects to be executed in the first phase of the smart city project.

The projects include a modern traffic signalling system for the city, developing a railway multi-modal hub in the Master Canteen area and Bhubaneswar Urban Knowledge Centre.

"The detailed reports for these projects are being prepared. We will float international tenders in June to finalise the bidders for the projects," said a senior BDA official.