Taipei City Government has been working in collaboration with private sector partners to promote smart city policies for many years. This year, it joined six local partners to attend the IoT forum in Europe. Through the virtual exhibition, matchmaking talks, and presentation on smart city policies, the city government was able to promote the brand of Smart Taipei to the participants. The city government and its partners were involved in discussion and exchange with other delegates in areas such as smart service applications and actual Proof of Concept (PoC) cases.
On topics such as AIoT in school campus management systems, real-time detection systems as smart school campus security solution, AI digital road information integration platform deployment for managing road hazards and road assets, utilisation of WiFi signal for smart detection and management of senior citizens’ health, local partners from Taipei organised exciting demos of smart solutions, which attracted over 4,557 industry personnel.
Director Lee Chen-yu of the Taipei Smart City Project Management Office introduced the concept of Smart Taipei and the related mechanisms, as well as sharing some of the successful PoC projects. The combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches helped Taipei City Government enhance city services by applying advanced mobile information technology. It also won the city government several international awards, including the 4th place ranking among smart cities around the world in the 2021 Smart City Index published by IMD.
The Smart City Taiwan project utilises all types of smart technologies (such as IoT, Big Data, and AI) to effectively integrate local, industry, and civilian needs. Support from the central government speeds up collaboration and integration between cities and towns and achieves local and industry innovation. The spread of smart applications in both cities and towns constructs a vision where people, companies, and governments exist in harmony and drive local innovation.
Smart technologies are applied to solve the pain points of local government and civilians, boost cross-domain industry collaboration and achieve local and industrial innovation. The collaboration and integration between “cities” and “towns” will create livable communities, business-facilitating, and innovation-fostering for civilians, businesses, and government.
The Smart City Taiwan project uses policies to help innovative applications, technological research and development, and integrated hardware/software solution development, connects the governance needs of local governments with empirical verification of public and private fields, and integrates domestic solutions and collaborating with foreign partners to seize business opportunities.
“Smart Government” is proposed as the main body to promote along with seven other main projects including Smart Security, Smart Building, Smart Transportation”, Smart Education, Smart Health, Smart Environment, and Smart Economy, forming the Smart City 1+7 field.
Combining the top-down policy and the button up, creative proposal, it is expected that Taipei City can build co-prosperous ecosystems for the government, citizens, and industries, creating a blueprint for future planning of a smart city in Taipei.
As reported by OpenGov Asia, in the push for smart city programs around the world, the Taipei City Government’s rebranded digital pass enables a quick vaccination appointment and, shortly, could incorporate digital proof of COVID-19 vaccination status, adding to the city’s array of diverse and smart COVID-19 containment measures.
Known as the “Taipei Card” until last year, TaipeiPASS was designed as a one-stop solution for 80% of municipal services, from paying taxes and parking tickets to utility bill payments, access to the library resources, and a citizen hotline. In addition, citizens can remotely cast a vote, file a complaint, report an offence, and enjoy exclusive dining and shopping discounts at stores.
Commissioner of Taipei’s Department of Information Technology said that in addition to the check-in, a data analytics model of citizen flows at places of business will be adopted in the service to prevent COVID-19 transmission. As for those less familiar with smart devices, the city is allowing them to check in with a registered Taipei EasyCard.