To revitalise and steer Indo- Israel economic and investment relations, the first formal meeting of India-Israel CEOs forum was organized on July 6, 2017 in Tel-Aviv coinciding with the visit of Narendra Modi, Hon’ble Prime Minister of India to Israel.

The ability to harness and store large volumes of data to enable future services and add extensions to current services to improve can only be achieved with big data.

Big data will be the thread that binds together all the diverse elements deployed in a smart city. It would be inconceivable to have any kind of meaningful smart city application layer without leveraging on big data. The Internet of Things (IoT) layer of big data sensors will generate an avalanche of data.

The role of big data during project implementation is different from that of project operations. The implementation phase typically consists of planning, design and construction.

Most large-scale infrastructure projects today are increasingly going the public-private-partnership (PPP) way. Technology and governance are key enablers in shaping the way forward for PPPs, while data-driven outcomes are critical because these projects need to generate value-for-money, be innovative and attain operational efficiency in a defined time frame.

Right now, there is a proliferation of big data that can be used for a myriad of purposes. Unfortunately, without a structure in which to organise big data, its full potential can often be overlooked.

Technological advances are now revolutionising development, construction, maintenance and day-to-day operations of projects.

The first step in video analytics is to train artificial intelligence (AI). This requires AI to go through thousands of hours of video to 'learn' what different objects, such as people, cars, license plates and trucks are. Initially, a human must help the AI by tagging different objects, but very quickly the AI can self-learn and educate itself at a rate that is orders of magnitude faster than what people can do.

I think in many sectors the policies are conducive. The most recent example is the Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Project, where IFC was the lead public-private-partnership (PPP) transaction advisor. We helped structure the bidding process to include a three-tiered payment security mechanism.