India and Japan forge data partnership to power AI-ready smart cities | India News
BENGALURU: A Japanese construction technology firm and an Indian science-backed data platform have joined forces to unlock one of urban planning’s most persistent blind spots: the vast trove of construction data that goes dark the moment a building project closes.ONESTRUCTION Inc., a Tottori-based specialist in open-standard built environment data, and DataKaveri Systems, the commercial arm of IISc Bangalore’s Center of Data for Public Good (CDPG), have signed a memorandum of understanding to integrate construction data into AI-powered urban data exchanges across Indian and Japanese cities.The signing took place on the sidelines of the inaugural Japan-India AI Strategic Dialogue – a bilateral initiative to advance cooperation in AI and data infrastructure.Under the agreement, the two companies will work to connect ONESTRUCTION’s openBIM platform — IFC, the internationally recognized open data standard for construction information — with DataKaveri’s Intelligent Universal Data Exchange (IUDX), a platform already covering urban mobility, utilities, environment and public services across 55 smart cities in India.The ambition is to securely stream construction data, such as floor plans, utility layouts and asset histories, to city-scale AI applications and digital twins without getting lost or locked in individual project silos after construction is complete.Lucas Heywood, ONESTRUCTION’s VP of global strategy, said the collaboration points to a future where standardized building data can be useful “in terms of everything that describes a city.” Ashok Krishnan, VP of commercial business and revenue at CDPG and DataKaveri, describes the construction industry as sitting on a “gold mine of data” that rarely crosses the boundaries of individual projects.The two organizations said they will jointly explore AI use-cases drawing on joint construction and urban datasets and pursue bilateral funding opportunities. Both said they hoped the model could be replicated internationally.
