NHAI's Akhilesh Srivastava at Forefront of India's Digital Transformation.

1. NHAI's Akhilesh Srivastava at Forefront of India's Digital Transformation The Government of India’s bid to modernise the country’s public sector, especially Roads & Highways and Legal, has started paying off after it launched several development projects under a modernisation campaign. India has been witnessing a major digital transformation ever since. The modernisation campaign integrates advanced technology with administration and operations to make the system more efficient, simple, and expeditious. The campaign has been making a seismic impact on highways and law and aiding the digital transformation. And Akhilesh Srivastava, Chief General Manager (CGM) at the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), has been instrumental to the transformation. CGM Akhilesh Srivastava heads various infrastructure projects under the modernisation campaign that includes Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS), drones for highway projects, Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system, GPS Tolling, and Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). The ATMS, or Traffic Incident Management System (TIMS), uses devices such as cameras and speed sensors with databases to improve, ease, and organise traffic on highways. The system gathers real-time data from the equipment and transmits it to a local command centre for integration and processing. The processed data helps in providing digital and physical services, including incident management, traffic routing and re-routing, congestion alerts, etc. The ATMS provides real-time traffic monitoring, traffic signal monitoring and control, traffic camera monitoring and control, active traffic management, road weather information system, and many others. Recently, the NHAI began the installation of a new surveillance camera system as a part of the ATMS. The new system will use Internet Protocol cameras with advanced imaging technology to generate 3D maps of traffic and relay it to the command centre. ETC, another project successfully undertaken by CGM Srivastava, allows users to pay toll electronically, easing the flow of traffic and reducing the time lapsed at plazas. The RFID- encoded (FASTag) ETC system uses sensors and computers to instantly debit toll fee from vehicles. Srivastava also is working on an advanced iteration of the ETC – GPS tolling – which is already being used in the European Union nations. The system will use GPS and GSM to track vehicular movement on national highways and automatically bill and debit the toll charges by calculating the distance travelled. It will bill the user only for the distance they travel instead of for the entire stretch of the highway. The new system has the potential to end the need for expensive Toll infrastructure. The pilot of the project is being conducted in the Delhi-Mumbai corridor. Srivastava also is working to incorporate the use of industrial drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for the designing, construction, and monitoring of highway projects and help the IMS carry out surveillance of national highways.

2. More recently, the NHAI CGM (and others) developed a first-of-its-kind Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) portal for the automated/semi-automated settlement of legal disputes in the trade and commerce sectors. The UN-recognised techno-legal cyber suite will allow the Indian legal system to focus on more pressing cases by automating the redressal of commercial disputes in construction, highways, and other sectors. It also will make India a reliable international destination for full-fledged cyber arbitration. Besides these, Akhilesh Srivastava also is undertaking megaprojects such as Wayside Amenities and advising international projects such as the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway (IMTTH) project. #AkhileshSrivastava #NHAI #ATMS #ODR #ETC