Agartala, the capital city of Tripura in India, has established a data center for its Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC).

Claiming to be the first Smart City in India to establish its own data center, the facility will be used to solve "urban challenges" and improve municipal service delivery.

Reported by Northeast Live as well as other local publications, the data center was inaugurated on August 5 by Chief Secretary JK Singha, along with Secretary of Urban Development Abhishek Singh and the CEO of Agartala Smart City, Shailesh Kumar Yadav.

The new data center is a result of Rs 30 crores ($3.57m) of investment and is connected to all aspects of the Smart City, including CCTV cameras, traffic signals, LED display boards, and weather information boards via a 156 km optical fiber network owned by Agartala Smart City.

Prior to the launch of the data center, the ICCC was hosted in the Department of Information Technology's data center.

CEO Yadav noted that the decision to move to a separate data center was motivated by "several reasons."

The data center has a primary storage capacity of one petabyte, as well as 1.9 petabytes of secondary storage. It keeps all data across Agartala for 30 days.

"In cases of incidents where the police or other authorities need to retain data for longer periods, it can be accommodated," said Yadav.

He added: "This advanced facility is unique in being the only Smart City in India to have its own data center and optical fiber network. The infrastructure is also scalable to meet future needs.”

Agartala was selected as part of the Smart Cities Mission, an urban renewal and retrofitting program by the Government of India with an aim to develop 100 cities across the country citizen-friendly and sustainable. The project has been ongoing since 2016.