What you need to know about Hong Kong Smart City
Modernization for cities has historically leveraged a variety of technological advancements and these, in turn, make life a lot easier for the citizens. Certain governments around the world understand this concept and move to create truly smart cities to its effect. Hong Kong seeks to be one of them.
On July 1, just like it does every year, Hong Kong celebrated its anniversary. I was honored to get invited to the gala for the celebration hosted by the Hong Kong government in San Francisco. Here, I learned a lot about Hong Kong’s smart city initiatives.
Hong Kong has created a comprehensive plan that extends across all aspects of its residents' lives, the government wishes to implement more technological innovation to instill a practical positive impact. It intends to achieve this through six simultaneously run smart programs.
1. Smart Mobility
By utilizing data to create effective air, rail, and road transport and traffic management systems, Hong Kong seeks to improve how its residents move around. The Octopus card, which is a contactless smart card for both online and offline payments, is at the center of this initiative and over 95% of residents already use it. Examples of Smart Mobility initiatives include: Development of a Traffic Data Analytics System to enhance traffic management, Development of the crowd management system to facilitate the monitoring of people and vehicle flows during major events, Establishment of real-time arrival information system for green minibuses and establishment of a $1 billion Smart Traffic Fund to promote research and application of vehicle-related innovation and technology.
2. Smart Living
The government uses digital identities to improve healthcare, emergency responses, recreation, and convenience around the city. A city with complete access to free Wi-Fi and entirely run through digital payments is at our forefront. Some other examples of Smart Living initiatives are: Development of Intelligent Recreation Services such as Booking and Information Systems and launch of an application in enhancing location tracking of hikers at remote areas of weak or no mobile network coverage.
3. Smart Environment
Through its extended action plan, Hong Kong intends to be a completely climate-friendly city by 2050. This green initiative connotes adopting technology to monitor pollution, reduce carbon emissions, effectively manage waste, and optimize energy usage.
4. Smart People
The smart people program is all about making the educational system more effective through increased adoption of the STEM curriculum, university grants, and the promotion of entrepreneurship and innovation in the culture.
5. Smart Government
Here, public information is key and the government wishes to make e-services more accessible through cloud-powered public data portals and platforms. An interesting initiative is called “iAM Smart” Platform that enhances e-services with the help of artificial intelligence, chatbots and big data analytics.
6. Smart Economy
Making the economy smarter is all about adopting more technological innovations in finance, tourism, and law. The government seeks to increase investor interest through technological reindustrialization.
Conclusion
Hong Kong is one of the fastest-emerging smart cities in the world and it plans to maintain this rate through interconnectivity, industrial reforms, and a government powered by technology.