IDC Smart City Asia Pacifics Awards 2020 Winners

ADMINISTRATION

Haikou City Brain

Haikou, Hainan

China

Haikou City Brain currently serves governance, transportation, healthcare, tourism and water utilities in Hainan by building a city-scale data pool that converges more than one billion records of data to enhance the effectiveness of governance and public service. For example, it allows for a one-stop and mobile approval for more than 3,000 items that requires cross-department nods. In terms of public services, a mobile app has been built that currently connects 52% of the population so that they can enjoy 462 convenient public services, such as weather report viewing, real-time traffic enquiry, route planning, doctor appointment, etc. on the go. In terms of transportation, the introduction of AI traffic light helps ease the traffic jams on main streets of the city. For city governance, a consolidated and convergent city-level commanding center that uses a mega screen as its virtualization approach helps the management team master the city situations at a real-time manner, analyze and take intermediate response to mitigate and manage. In terms of health care, convergent and smart cross-hospital medical records enhance diagnosis efficiency for doctors as well as personal health management.

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

New Taipei City's Smart Community App 2.0

New Taipei City Government

Taiwan

In a bid to enhance community management efficiency and provide citizens with more user-friendly channels for civil participation on public affairs, New Taipei City launched the project “Smart Community App 2.0” - an expansion of the original app. The desired outcomes include: (1) reinforce cross-agency platform integration to expand the application of community services, (2) continue operational simplicity and reduce carbon dioxide emission by converting from paper to digitalization, and (3) private sector and academic collaborations for upgraded municipal services, and (4) encourage civic participation and increase public transparency on municipal affairs.

Perth Smart Cities Collaboration Market Place

City of Perth

Australia

The project combines several small projects that represent collaboration of the city and its partners through a Collaboration Market Place platform, which aims to enable the exchange of ideas and data among citizens and interest groups in order to evolve and scale technologies through a range of solutions, with the final goal of improving livability, sustainability and workability in the city of Perth. These set of small projects included smart irrigation (e.g. 107 smart irrigation devices support water and energy savings and operational efficiencies); video analytics thru CCTV camera analytics to support decisions; a smart lighting trial; a sustainability dashboard with solutions and technologies that include an Open Data Portal, Public LoRa WAN and Citizen Science, which promotes the participation of schools and universities.

DIGITAL EQUITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Desa Digital / Digital Village

West Java

Indonesia

The Government of West Java is working to utilize more technology to improve its governance, public services, and the citizens’ life quality in Indonesia's most populous province. This is challenging as most West Java citizens live in predominantly rural areas—as many as 5,312 villages—and have limited access to technology; some even have no internet connection. The Digital Village program is looking to digitalize West Java's governance and public services including assist villages, especially ones in more remote areas, to get internet infrastructures, advanced technology innovation, and human capacity to optimally utilize technology to improve their livelihood.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, TOURISM, ARTS, LIBRARIES, CULTURE, OPEN SPACES

Intelligent Tourism through Digital Currencies and Blockchain Technologies

Malacca

Malaysia

The Ministry of Tourism of China estimates a total of 3 million tourists per year to visit Malacca, a leading tourist destination in Malaysia. In order to enhance tourism development and improve education, Malaysia’s Melaka Straits City will be using Blockchain technology to track tourist visas, passengers, luggage, and all kinds of booking services in real-time. The basis of the blockchain technology in the city will be DMI (Distributed Market Infrastructure) platform with DMI coin, a cryptocurrency collaboration between DMI and Melaka Straits City, which will mainly be used in the payment of government-based services in the city. However, DMI will also feature an exchange where tourists who visit Melaka Straits City can exchange their fiat currencies for DMI coins. When tourists visit Melaka, they will be required to exchange their money into digital currencies that they can use to pay for services using their mobile phones or computers. The DMI web application will be available on PC and the mobile applications will run on Android and iOS devices to provide flexibility regardless of the preference of the individuals.

EDUCATION

Omni Smart Education in Taipei

Taipei

Taiwan

Taipei City Government (TCG) is actively developing smart education to put iCampus into practice. iCampus aims to bring up the self-learning capability of students, encourage teachers to apply innovative teaching, and increase the interaction between teachers and parents by utilizing technologies. The 4 missions of iCampus are: 1) Build smart Internet in campus, 2) establish smart future classroom, 3) create digital learning platform, and 4) implement mobile smart learning. Through these missions, TCG aims to integrate diverse services into education and provide omni smart education to teachers, parents and students. TCG is also actively developing smart education to put CooC Cloud.There are currently 6 colleges and universities offering 35 university experience courses, and 13 high schools in 3 counties and cities sharing 12 online courses. It is expected that in 109, 39 high schools across 11 counties and cities will share 25 diversified elective courses. Additionally, starting from 2019, TCG is establishing parent-teacher-student integration platform to provide diverse and customized educational services through cloud data and information integration.

Wenchang Smart Education Initiative

Wenchang, Hainan Province

China

With the acceleration of the "Hai Chengwen" integration process, Wenchang's industrial development has increased rapidly, and infrastructure facilities have been accelerated and improved. The city is moving towards building a smart high-tech space city. The project started the smart education project to build a central integrated education center with 6 platforms upon "Cloud + End" solution design. "One center" refers to the Education Operation Support Center which connects the upstreams and downstreams; "End" refers to the construction of applied environment for smart schools and covers all the endpoints of over ~200 schools in Wenchang city. The project will form a new model for smart education in Wenchang city and build a new education trend of "everyone learn, everywhere learn, and always learn". The construction of Wenchang City Education Cloud is a leap in the level of education in Wenchang City, which not only improves the provincial education informatization and balanced development of education, but also greatly improves the level of Wenchang education to reach domestic and international advanced level.

PUBLIC HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES

Participatory Care and Telemedicine

Kaohsiung City, Pingtung County and Penghu County

Taiwan

In order to implement its "long-term care" policy providing home-based care for the aged, the Government offers several community oriented remote smart care services. This helps resolve the issue of offshore islands having insufficient medical resources. Patients with chronic illnesses that need long-term care at home can now receive better healthcare, making it more convenient for residents to seek medical attention. Patients could use their e-health passport to easily access several health data such as temperature, blood pressure and blood oxygen with an all-in-one health station lactated around as. In addition, people could easily track their data through APP and doctor could also track their patient's data on the cloud, implementing telemedicine policy.

PUBLIC HEALTH - DISASTER RESPONSE / EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

EQRNet-Earthquake Response Management

Christchurch City Council, Canterbury Seismic Instruments Ltd

New Zealand

The earthquakes in Canterbury, Marlborough, and Wellington caused major loss of life and financial losses over $50B demonstrating the consequences of an earthquake event are severe and long lasting. Christchurch experienced red-zoning across the entire central city causing major economic and societal disruptions. GeoNet has been Council’s principal source of information when managing immediate and longer-term earthquake response actions. However, there are less than 25 GeoNet sensors in Christchurch, only 4 on the outskirts of the central city, and none in the CBD itself. Therefore in July 2018, the Smart Christchurch programme at Christchurch City Council (CCC) initiated a three year trial of the earthquake response network, EQRNet, with local company Canterbury Seismic Instruments (CSI). EQRNet is a dense network of more than 150 ground-based accelerometers which allows Council to manage its earthquake response in real-time; safeguarding communities, staff, and assets above and below ground. This trial was initiated on the back of a 10-sensor pilot in the Christchurch CBD which demonstrated significant variations in ground-shaking over distances as small as 100m. This proved that a much greater level of monitoring is required than currently exists through GeoNet instrumentation.

Using EQRNet, we instantly compare localised shaking to every building's design intent and NZ Building Code Limit States using best-practice spectral analysis techniques. The network’s output provides defendable real-time information to building managers, emergency teams, and the public, allowing better management of response during seismic events.

PUBLIC HEALTH – SMART POLICING

Crime-Free City Service Platform

Sejong Metropolitan Autonomous City

South Korea

Sejong city has established a comprehensive urban safety net to respond to urban safety through the establishment of a horizontal sharing and cooperation system among digital and data, clean technology, and institutions in order to implement the "Happiness City," a crime-safety city. The 'Happiness City' interconnects crimes in cities through urban integrated platforms and works together with citizens, police, and related agencies to respond to crimes, rather than a one-way analog system that monitors and responds to criminal situations through 112 or patrol cars in the existing city. First, it provided a navigation system for smartphone-based public safety routes and enabled real-time exchange of location information among acquaintances such as friends and family. In addition, safety return through CCTV is managed in conjunction with the Smart City Operation Center. Also, they will monitor crime vehicles through CCTV and face recognition CCTV to monitor children, dementia elderly people, and criminals in real-time. To enhance the surveillance efficiency, Sejong City automatically monitors criminal situations based on AI. They established a system to share CCTV images and track criminals in real time in the event of an accident by linking the information on the occurrence of a crime between the 112 and the integrated platform of smart city. In addition, a system of quick response to criminal situations by police officers and connection between 911 emergency operation systems was established. Finally, citizens provide suggestions and feedback through Smart Portal, and the construction of the system is continuously improving through this way. Through the system, Sejong city can provide a safe living environment for citizens.

SMART BUILDINGS / SMART TECH PARKS

Smart Lighting for Public Housing Estates

Nationwide

Singapore

With more than 80% of the household population living in public housing, government agencies are focused on developing environmentally sustainable estates concurrent with Singapore’s vision of becoming a Smart Nation. A leading Asian public housing developer wanted to upgrade its lighting network for one of its matured brown-field estates into an effective smart lighting solution. A multi-disciplinary approach has been adopted to connect more than 10,000 luminaires with motion sensors wirelessly to a smart communications mesh network, managed through a single backend platform that provides on-demand lighting monitoring and control for over 42 resident blocks covering common areas such as corridors, stairwells, gardens and walkways, and 7 carparks. The deployed AgilLiteS Smart Lighting in the estate's common areas, walkways, parks and gardens as well as indoor and outdoor parking areas provides a holistic approach in reducing energy consumption, ensure estates residents’ safety and allow network viability to integrate with other IoT-driven applications.

SMART WATER

Tainan Smart Flood Prevention Network Construction Plan

Tainan Government

Tainan, Taiwan

Almost 60% of West Tainan's terrain is low-lying and near the sea, which causes flood risk. To tackle of this, the executive authorities has adopted a smart flood prevention solution since 2015, deploying sensors for floodgate and water level monitoring and using big data and analytics to study meteorology, rainfall, and water level alert information; analysis is open to the authorities and concerned citizens in time. There are 3 stages to the project: 1) collection of real-time information including deployment of the sensor on floodgate, and collection of the CCTV cam information deployed over the city already; 2) based on collected data at the Tainan hydrology platform and historical flood situations, the prediction of flood possibility for near 3-6 hours; the prediction will promulgate the authorities and will be open to citizens via mobile App, Line bot and so on; and 3) the data will roll forward for overall analysis of the flooding process to create flood prevention best practices.

Underground Antenna and Excavation Sensing Device

Korea District Heating Corp

Multiple Cities, South Korea

46% of the pipeline in Korea is over 20 years old and are mostly buried underground prompting a request to a local solutions provider to develop a multi-functional device that monitors unreported excavation and plumbing abnormalities (leak, gas, leakage, corrosion and etc.). The provider installed excavation detection sensors on the surface of buried heat transport pipe to alert excavation situation by detecting the flexural strength of the pipe and measure the ground heat in the upper part of the heat transport pipe. With wireless technology, it can capture information such as excavation/heating and leakage/slope and monitor the status via an integrated control platform. In addition, the sensing pattern algorithm technology analyzes the vibration patterns of three-axis and can be advanced by learning patterns of various situation. The Korea District Heating Corporation is planning to commercialize the project with its solution and has already signed MOU for "Cooperation in IoT technology for safety management of collective energy facilities." In the future, it aims to be developed as multi-sense situation-aware sensors by adding sensor and improving algorithm.

SUSTAINABLE INFRASTRUCTURE

Energy Data for Smart Decision Making

New South Wales

Australia

The project consists of the development of an open modelling platform that uses spatial data and data on solar exposure, energy generation and consumption to help end users calculate the solar power potential of areas of interest. Thus, users are enabled with information to make informed decisions on investments in solar power generation. The project integrates an interactive map of Australia that uses solar potential and energy time-series data, along with transparent open-source models that analyse potential solar energy in specific areas. This information support councils and end users in making decisions about investment in solar panels and precinct scales; also, allows councils to design policies and incentives with statistical analysis of energy technologies.

Smart Poles for a Sustainable & Scalable Smart City

New Delhi

India

New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and a local solutions provider installed 55 Smart Poles (Phase I) spread in Connaught Place, Lutyens New Delhi. to help address five major areas of concern, mainly quick response to safety incidents; response to environment changes; managing traffic and transport; connectivity to business houses due to its prime location, and additional inflow of citizens; making it tourist friendly while maintaining aesthetics of the city. This led to improved E-governance practices such as:

1. The two- layered integrated solution to provide better network connectivity services backed by stringent uptime and Service Level Agreements.
2. Fiber connected sites for more reliable and high capacity fiberized backbone to meet the increasing data connectivity needs.
3. Integration of CCTV cameras at NDMC’s ICCC has allowed to monitor traffic and vehicular movement in real time, thus helping NDMC in building predictive analysis to proactively mitigate the traffic congestion.
4. 24*7 real time video feed so that NDMC can react quickly to any security incident, thus reducing violent and antisocial activities.
5. Data captured by sensors allows to identify the sources and trends of poor air quality to take timely and effective preventive measures backed by data analytics.

TRANSPORTATION - CONNECTED & AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES, PUBLIC TRANSIT, RIDE-HAILING/RIDE-SHARING

On-Demand Autonomous Buses

Sentosa

Singapore

In collaboration with the Sentosa Development Corporation and Singapore's Ministry of Transport, ST Engineering developed 4 Mobility-on-Demand-Vehicles (MODVs), 2 15-seater shuttles and 2 20-seater autonomous minibuses for intra-island travel within Sentosa. Visitors will be able to call for the MODV via an app on their smartphones or through information kiosks located across the island. For the autonomous bus to accurately position itself, it is required to collect data from multiple cameras, LIDARs, radars and ultrasonic sensors, which will be fused together and processed, to produce a 360-degree robust representation of static and dynamic objects under different weather conditions. Meanwhile sophisticated algorithms calculate free space and anticipates how the environment may change to enable smooth driving for a safe and enjoyable ride. These are all secured by technologies actively preventing any intrusions or threats that could impact driving. Remotely, a fleet manager can also actively monitor a fleet of autonomous buses using a robotics management system.

TRANSPORTATION – TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE

Minor accident remote handling system

Shenzhen

China

Shenzhen is faced with over 700 minor accidents during the morning and evening peaks on average. This affects transportation efficiency and citizen travel experience. To solve this problem, "minor accident remote handling system" was developed by the Smart Traffic Department of PingAn Smart City with Shenzhen Traffic Police. Officially launched in April 2017, the system aims to deliver the most convenient and efficient accident handling services for all Shenzhen drivers. Since then, drivers involved in minor accidents can report the case easily with ‘one click’ via H5 page or wechat mini program provided by Shenzhen Traffic Police. They can be remotely connected to the back-end service agent through audio and video services, and then follow guidelines to report accident evidence by simply taking photos or videos. The traffic police no longer need to reach the accident scene but complete liability determination remotely.

The whole accident clearance only takes 4.8 minutes on average, and 2 minutes at minimum. It effectively solves potential traffic congestion caused by slow accident handling and the lack of police manpower and realize the intelligent and rapid handling of accidents. Since it was launched, over 380,000 cases have been handled, and the work efficiency has increased by 40 times. As an effect, each police officer can handle about 200 cases per day, leading to the police manpower decreased by 70%.

URBAN PLANNING AND LAND USE

Development of a Common Spatial Data Infrastructure

SAR-wide

Hong Kong

The Built Environment Application Platform (BEAP) developed a set of territory-wide information product—actionable datasets—designed to enable applications to work responsively and seamlessly across Hong Kong. It takes common spatial data from the CSDI to produce built-environment specific spatial data. The BEAP has been prototyped during the Study, with 10 basic applications spanning 4 thematic areas of Planning & Landuse; Infrastructure & Engineering; Landscape, Environment & Conservation; and Others. The 10 prototype applications were distilled from a list of 30 through various engagement activities with more than 40 government departments, research institutes, academia and professional bodies, which these prototype development reflect the most imminent needs for city planning, management and operation. The 10 prototype applications include: (1) Site Search platform to provide a one-stop shop for decision-making for departments to search for sites; (2) Public Facilities and Open Space Analysis tool to assess provisions of public facilities and open space against future population, urban characteristics, and planning standards; (3) Landuse Monitoring and Analytics platform for detecting changes in land use and abnormal activities in a designated area; (4) Scenario Generation for Planning and Development toolset to enable quick generation of different preliminary design schemes, building massing and scenario testing; (5) Connectivity Analysis tool to identify access and routes to local facilities and amenities for different pedestrian types; (6) Visualisation and Analysis of Underground Space and Utilities for management of underground facilities records with adjustable LODs to facilitate forward planning of underground space; (7) Compliance Checking tool to assist departments in assessing development proposals and code compliance of building plans; (8) Visualisation and Analysis of Urban Green Infrastructure platform to visualise and analyse landscape character, vegetation density, carbon absorption and impact of greenery on the urban landscape; (9) Built Environment Information Dashboard for visualising related data collected and stored within various government databases; and (10) Workflow Management Platform to streamline dissemination and circulation process of documents to different departments for soliciting comments on studies, developments and proposals.

The BEAP is hosted on a virtualised environment, to allow for future expansion of services. It makes use of a multiple server architecture on Cloud platform to accommodate for the different components and avoid single point of failure. The BEAP support system consists of a web server to host the web portal and provide communication, application server to host all related software and enable corresponding functionalities, database server to store and retrieve actionable data and temporary data, file server to store files for upload and download, and GPU server to support graphical and 3D display and visualization as well as deep learning and AI functions. AI and machine learning, developed through Python, is used for brownfield site recognition and change detection using photos to enable landuse analysis. A web-based GIS platform is used for most of the applications to enable visualisation and analysis of spatial information using maps. Automation function for compliance checking was developed, in accordance to local assessment criteria, for BIM to be integrated into local machines to efficiently assess building plans. A Digital Twin was created for selected areas to enable scenario generation and impact analysis. These 10 prototype applications will be scaled up in coming years along with the CSDI development. The BEAP has great potential to be further developed as the collaborative platform for Government, industry, academia and research institutes to foster interdepartmental and multilateral co-operation, as well as to serve as a foundation of various types of spatially and digitally enabled built environment applications for city planning and design formulation, decision making, resource management, as well as the delivery of high quality services to the public.

Smart Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Enhanced or SUAVE

Nationwide, Singapore

Singapore

With over 5,000 State properties under its management, the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) deploys drones to inspect and detect maintenance issues on State properties, which are subject to the Periodic Façade Inspection required by the Building and Construction Authority. This was developed and funded by the Municipal Services Productivity fund awarded by the Ministry of National Development. The images captured by the drone's high resolution cameras are analyzed by a unique machine learning algorithm known as Smart Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Enhanced (SUAVE), programmed specifically to detect defects in buildings and potential maintenance issues as small as cracks, debris, water ponding and even plant growth on State properties. At the same time, verified maintenance issues will be automatically sent to SLA’s in-house “SmartLAMD” app for the officer’s follow up action and tracking while on the move. Compared to the conventional physical inspection which uses boom lifts and gondolas, SUAVE has reduced inspection time from eight hours to one hour. Officers now use only 12.5% of the original conventional inspection time to review and address potential maintenance issues. Along with saving time, SUAVE has also significantly reduced inspection and repair costs.