Huawei Innovation Day Asia focuses on building smarter cities

Different perspectives on creating successful smart cities were a hot topic at the inaugural Huawei Innovation Day Asia, which was co-hosted by Huawei in partnership with the National University of Singapore today. The first Huawei Innovation Day Asia aims to build a platform for ICT players in Asia to communicate how to build an ecosystem under the theme Building Innovation Ecosystems for a Better Connected Asia. 

Singapore's Minister of Trade and Industry S Iswaran graced the event as the guest-of-honour and acknowledged that the forum came at a timely juncture given Asia’s rapid urbanisation.

"According to the Asian Development Bank, each year, 44 million people are being added to Asia’s urban population. This places the existing transportation, power and utility networks in cities under inexorable stress, and results in problems such as congestion, power outages and inadequate waste management. In addition, city authorities also need to meet the needs of their ageing populations, address citizens’ rising expectations for better government services, and embrace environmental sustainability," he said.

"Smart cities solutions, including the adoption of ICT technologies and the embedding of intelligent systems within buildings, transportation networks as well as utility grids, will play an increasingly important role in addressing these challenges."

Tan Kok Yam, Head of the Smart Nation Programme Office, Singapore Prime Minister's Office suggested several roles for governments in building of a smart nation.

Firstly, governments should ask the right questions, or at least the questions that point them in the right direction, he said. "We don't want to prescribe solutions but have those questions out there to be able to iterate and to come closer to the answers that we want," he said.

"In the Smart Nation framework... we don't start from the point of view of the technology, we start from the point of view of the citizen. How do you improve quality of life? How do you create opportunities for businesses and people? How do you bring people closer?"

Secondly, governments need to support the creative process, but not take it over. Activities already in place include incubation for tech startups, financial support and datasets open to the public, Tan said. "Over this year we have made strides to open data to the pblic, not just in terms of quantity but in quality.. they can build their own insights," he said.

Part of the creativity process includes creating spaces for experimentation. Today, Singapore has a number of test beds, including the Jurong Lake District area for testing smart municipal services, the One-North area for trialling autonomous vehicles, Yuhua where smart homes are being studied, and Sentosa for more tourist-focused applications, Tan disclosed. The country even has a fintech regulatory sandbox, where the rules are relaxed to facilitate innovation. "The intent is to give people with an idea (a) route to test their ideas in real life," he said.

Cybersecurity also comes into play here as the environment for creativity must be such that it can to safely exchange data. Singapore launched the Cybersecurity Agency to oversee this, he added.

Next, governments have to prepare to and for change, which brings everything back to asking the right questions. Preparing to and for changes in policies and regulation, processes and culture must come after test-bedding, Tan said. One recent development for the Singapore government is the IDA Hive, which is seated near the policy-makers, for example. He stressed that moving fast to exploit technology is important.

"The key.. is to facilitate the public, to facilitate the companies, to facilitate our internal partners to benefit industry and people," he said, drawing on a Chinese saying that one person may walk faster, but a group of people can walk farther (一个人走得很快，一群人走得更远).

"At the end of the day what the government can do is to plant a flag. Join us in this vision to grow a Smart Nation," he said.

Tan detailed the cycle of activities that governments should adopt in improving cities.

Joddy Hernandy, Senior VP, Telkom Indonesia said that smart cities can enhance interactions between citizens and the government. Telkom's Smart City Framework aims to enhance Indonesian cities along dimensions such as safety from crime and natural disasters, sustainability, as well as efficient traffic management, healthcare and education, he noted.

The Smart City framework has three layers: infrastructure and access solutions at the bottom, city management solutions in the middle, and then digital convergence occurring at the top layer, where digital users supporting integrated city management become a part of the 'digital biosphere'.

Telkom's framework further divides cities into five categories depending on their readiness to become a smart city, Hernandy said. Cities which use technology on an 'ad hoc' basis are least likely to become smart cities, followed by cities which are adopting technology on a small scale, termed 'initiative' cities. The next level up are 'scattered' cities, describing larger scale technology projects in place which have not been centralised. 'Integrative' cities are those where the technology projects can be integrated easily, while 'smart' cities are those where technology services are already ubiquitous.

Hernandy said that most of the cities in Indonesia are at the 'scattered' stage. Telkom aims to introduce technology to address selected municipal problems in the short-term, and work with the government on smart government solutions in the mid-to-long term. "We need to make the government smart, to develop solutions that sense the problems of cities," he said. "We can bring a city to the 'smart' level by integrating government data and applications."

One example of a smart government solution, Hernandy shared, is that problems in Bandung can be identified not just through video surveillance, but also via social media. "Bandung is No. 5 in the world for activities on Twitter," he said. "We capture data on social media to (identify) the problems faced by citizens."

Telkom partnered with Huawei to ensure the safety of delegates at the April 2015 event commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Asian African Conference and the 10th anniversary of the New Asian African Strategic Partnership. The city of Bandung installed video surveillance at key spots within the conference site and event venues, applied intelligent video analytics on the camera data to highlight and pre-empt potentially risky situations, and managed the whole through a converged command centre.

The broader smart city infrastructure in Bandung reduces crime and raises the standard of living in various ways. There is a broadband trunking private network for security-related communications, for example, and apps which allow citizens to provide viewpoints, recommendations and complaints, such as about damaged roads. Social media can be monitored for events that might require the authorities to intervene. Crisis management can be activated at the touch of the 'panic button', with police directed to the venue of the crisis and the authorities able to verify the event.

"In future we can use the technology for traffic management, analysing exceptions for (pedestrian and driver) behaviour," Hernandy said. "The safe city is beginning."

 

Telkom's Hernandy shared a comprehensive smart city framework that takes the state of technology adoption in a city into account when considering how to make it smarter. 

Cities are going to be more and more crucial to life as we know it, predicted Huawei's Joe So, CTO, Industry Solution, citing UN estimates that 67% of the world's population will live in a city by 2050. With challenges on maintaining public safety, avoiding traffic congestion, and managing scarce resources, So said smart city technology will be crucial in helping governments to improve the quality of urban experience for residents, businesses and visitors.

While there is widespread acceptance that technology will improve cities, So said government solutions for cities often exist in silos when they should be integrated through horizontal smart city platforms. He used the example of emergency response activities to show how smart cities can benefit from an integrated system. While an ambulance can be despatched to a venue, an integrated system would allow response teams to check the best route to get to the venue, while health personnel would be able to access the health records of the victims even before reaching them.

"It is all related. "Interdependency is very important to any smart city programme," he said. Huawei has developed methodologies for all aspects of building smart cities, from feasibility studies and concept designs, to deployments, he shared.

Huawei's smart city model involves multiple layers: sensors capturing data at the lowest layer, with telecommunications infrastructure providing the connectivity in the next layer. An analytics layer then makes sense of the data and distributes the results to different sectors of the city as required. "There is no such thing as a smart city unless you have the connections and collaboration," So noted.

So stressed that while companies like Huawei offer the tools to make cities smarter, the key to success is about solving specific problems. "You need to have a vision," he said. "Every city has different kinds of pains.. you need to address your pain."

Another tip is to go slow, and crowdsource opinions. "Select the pain points to address," So advised. "Do not only involve the government. You need to involve citizens."

So spoke about making smart cities a reality.

Li Jin Ge, President of Asia Pacific Region, Huawei said: "ICT technologies, particularly broadband, cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of Things, are already driving the digitisation of all industries. These technologies are also promoting improvements in planning and construction, management and operations, livable environments, and human touch in cities around the world."

The latest Huawei Global Connectivity Index from 2014 has shown that ICT infrastructure is pivotal to national competitiveness. It is estimated that a 20% increase in ICT investment will increase a country's GDP by 1%. Big data is key to supporting smart operations and plays an integral role in building smart cities.

Interested?

Read the TechTrade Asia blog post about Huawei's vision for a digital and connected future

Read the TechTrade Asia blog post about Singapore's efforts to facilitate smart city innovation

Read the TechTrade Asia blog post about the IDA Hive