IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Tencent’s QR code payment service for public transportation “sao yi Sao” (扫一扫) has reached more than 50 million users across 100 cities since its launch in 2017, local media is reporting (in Chinese).

Over the past year, the internet giant has been focusing more heavily on integrating its technologies into public transportation and piloting smart transportation initiatives in cities across China. The company recently announced that it is currently testing a new bus hailing system in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, and is exploring the application of cloud computing and big data in real-time traffic data analysis.

Project NOAH, the Philippines’ key disaster risk reduction and management system which was launched in 2012, has won an IDC award for the top smart city initiative in public safety at the analyst firm’s Smart City Asia Pacific awards (SCAPA).

For the awards, IDC Government Insights conducted a six-phase benchmarking exercise that involved identifying and cataloguing the key projects, online voting for public opinion, and assessment of an international advisory council.

The prospect of greater urban concentrations brings challenges to urban mobility. 5G networks, connected transport, and IoT bring solutions to municipalities.

The upgrade to 5G networks is not only going to transform industries, businesses, and consumers with intelligent connectivity. Low-latency connectivity plays a paramount role enabling an array of smart city applications including smart urban agriculture to real-time detection of crime to intelligent traffic management and, of course, self-driving cars.

Costa Rica's ministry of science, technology and telecommunications (Micitt) announced that it would unveil two new smart city pilots before 2021, according to its national plan of science, technology and innovation.

These two prototypes will run alongside the two smart regions announced by the deputy minister for telecommunications, Allan Ruiz, which could be completed before 2018.

Two Paphos projects have been given the green light, which officials say will move the area close to becoming a fully-fledged ‘Smart city’.

A spokesman for Paphos municipality told the Cyprus mail that two European programmes have been approved and are due to get underway in Paphos in July.

The French ambassador to Cyprus met with the mayor of Paphos on Wednesday and discussed the town’s efforts to transform itself into a ‘smart’ city.

The ambassador, Rene Troccaz, met with Phedonas Phedonos at Paphos town hall.

“This is the second time they have met each other and the ambassador was particularly interested in our efforts to establish Paphos as smart city,” a municipality spokesman told the Cyprus Mail.

Da Nang city in central Vietnam has announced that its smart city project is going to contribute towards socio-economic development of the city and will usher in an era of technology-based city management.

Speaking at the Smart City Summit 2019 held in Da Nang, the city’s Chairman, Huynh Duc Tho, said that a smart city development plan for 2018-2025 has already been approved and is expected to be completed around 2030. He added that the Summit is a good opportunity for the city’s agencies and domestic and foreign experts to discuss the models, solutions, technologies, and policies to successfully build a smart city.

The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Professor Umar Garba Danbatta, spoke on Nigeria’s participation at the International Telecommunication Union Telecom World conference in Durban, South Africa and how Nigeria intends to drive her digital transformation, using modern technologies. Emma Okonji who attended the world conference, presents the excerpts:

Sören Link, Mayor of Duisburg, Germany, has lead a 19-person government delegation to visit Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China. The visit, which took place from September 3 to 4, aims to deepen their cooperation in Smart City development. Their cooperation will focus on transforming Duisburg from a traditional industrial city into a service-oriented Smart City through smart government, smart port logistics, smart education, smart infrastructure, 5G and broadband, smart homes and urban IoT.

A municipal utility is more than a service company: it is part of a city’s identity, core of what is often called the municipal corporation, an important power player.

The Germany town of Emden sits at the edge of the North Sea. This community of 50,000 people has been operating as a town for over 800 years. Today, it is home to a shipbuilding wharf, an automotive plant, and a university. Emden is surrounded by water and endless flat land with windmill farms and biogas plants. Unfortunately, many young people are not convinced that Emden is the sexiest place they ever wanted to live in. Like many European regions, Emden is fighting demographic change and the exodus of young people, while larger cities fight collapse because of inflow.

The Government’s ambitious “Digital India” plan aims to digitally connect all of India's villages and gram panchayats by broadband internet, promote e-governance and transform India into a connected knowledge economy. By the year 2019, the ‘Digital India’ program of the Government of India (GOI), envisages that 250,000 Indian villages will enjoy broadband connectivity, and universal phone connectivity. This is a truly visionary and commendable initiative. However, to implement this vision in a country where most of the population resides in rural areas is very challenging. It can best be done by creating Digital “Town Squares” – which will be tower-based sites that enable the Smart Village and would become the focal point for the providing information, social, e-learning and e-governance services to villages. This can become the spring board for rapid economic growth in the rural areas.

The internet of things (IoT) is key to smart cities in order to make them more intelligent, efficient and sustainable. However, digital security investments in smart cities are struggling to keep pace, leaving the potential for future vulnerabilities to the IoT ecosystem, according to a new report from ABI Research.

Smart city security spending coming from financial, information and communication technologies (ICT) and defense industries will account for 56% of the projected $135 billion in total cybersecurity critical infrastructure in 2024, ABI Research forecasts. The remaining 44% of the spending will be split between energy, healthcare, public security, transport, and water and waste sectors. This spending will leave IoT woefully underfunded and vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Dr Paul Cureton of ImaginationLancaster at Lancaster University and Elliot Hartley, managing director of Garsdale Design, examine the UK’s digital twin ambitions

“[If to develop future] infrastructure is to encourage national coherence rather than a new kind of balkanisation, then its development must be guided by policies and standards that assure interoperability between all the subnetworks of the national system.” William Mitchell, City of Bits (1995)

According to the latest research from ABI Research, the installed base of digital twin and city modelling deployments is expected to grow from just a handful of early implementations in 2019 to more than 500 by 2025.

“Originally developed for industrial systems, the digital twin concept is now spreading to the smart cities environment,” says Dominique Bonte, vice president for End Markets at ABI Research. “However, it won’t be a single Uber-like digital twin for an entire city but rather an aggregation and integration of domain-specific digital twins for systems like smart buildings, traffic infrastructure, energy grids, and water management.”

As technologies like the Internet of Things, virtual reality and augmented reality mature, city planners can build virtual replicas of urban infrastructure to better respond to local energy and environmental changes.

Imagine the potential benefits of having a nearly complete digital replica of a city — a virtual model of its roads, buildings and public spaces — combined with real-time information feeds from sensors and other data sources. Residents could visualize the impact of new construction before breaking ground. First responders could run computer simulations to prepare for potential emergency scenarios. And city planners could better analyze and respond to local energy and environmental changes.

The United Nations is predicting that the world's cities will need to house an additional 2.9 billion people by the middle of what is being called "the urban century." Hundreds of cities will be built and expanded to accommodate migration and growth - particularly in China and India. "This is leading to a rise in competition between cities to attract and retain the investment and people needed for urban development and revitalization" said Dr Steve Hodgkinson, Research Director. The report, titled "Is your city smart enough?", identifies two broad streams of digital enablers in cities.

The growth of urban areas in Asia-Pacific has exploded over the past few decades — between 1980 and 2010, the population living in the region’s cities grew by more than 1 billion, and by 2050, the region’s urban population will reach 3.2 billion.

Unsurprisingly, digital-related growth and investment are highly concentrated in the region’s major cities, which are playing an ever-important role in shaping and controlling digital innovation. In the process, they are also helping tackle digital governance challenges, as the report Cities as Epicenters of Digitalization, presented at the 2019 Singapore Summit, shows.

Ecuadorian capital Quito will launch public biometric facial recognition as part of the country’s first digital city program after an agreement was signed by the mayor and the government’s ICT ministry (Mintel), BNamericas reports.

The digital city initiative will include digitization of national identity cards and passports for a public safety project using facial recognition technology, as well as digital platforms to monitor parking spaces, track bus routes and estimated arrival times, and emergency systems in highway tunnels.

The Center for Digital Government ranked El Paso sixth in the nation for "Digital City Governments." That means the Sun City is being recognized for investing in technology.

"It is becoming so common place in terms of being able to do anything like e-government, applying for job, helping out kids with school assignments. All of those things are just part of what we do in the technology age, and if people don't have those skill-sets they get left behind," El Paso Libraries Director Dionne Mack said.

The City Council of Valencia has launched Connecta VLCi project which aims to consolidate Valencia as a Smart City. The objective of the project is to provide 194 municipal buildings with the artificial intelligence needed to improve the public services they offer. Its implementation is possible thanks to 50% co-funding by the Ministry of Economy and Business.

Intelligent services for satisfied customers and sustainable governance

Connecta VLCi previews the installation of internal and external environmental sensors in sports buildings, museums and monuments, markets and municipal schools. They will allow control of atmospheric and light pollution, temperature and humidity, and the consumption of energy and water, which shall ultimately lead to important financial savings. In addition, the installation of sensors will make it possible to start an environmental awareness platform in a hundred schools and a platform for people who sell in the municipal markets to offer their products online.