What will a Smart City look like in the future?

A smart city is expected to bring many benefits to the people. Photo: ST.

The power of information technology

Speaking about Smart City, Mr. Pham Quoc Thai, Deputy Director of the Urban Development Department, said that, to develop Smart City, we should focus on three main areas: smart urban planning; intelligent urban construction and management, including the foundation of urban technical infrastructure and information technology systems; providing smart urban facilities for organizations and individuals in the urban districts.

Agreeing with this view, Vina Game deputy general director Vu Minh Tri said that the key to building and utilizing effectively a Smart City’s infrastructure is to have a good and comprehensive connection to its urban areas.

In addition, according to Mr. Tri, technology infrastructure must be built in parallel with the urbanization of the city. If the information technology infrastructure is installed later, it will be difficult to synchronize and not be effective in providing utilities to the people.

Speaking about the specific purpose of building a Smart City, according to the President of Hanoi City - Nguyen Duc Chung, the city is trying its best to build a Smart City with the focus of effective e-government in managing four key areas of education, healthcare, culture and transportation. And to implement this project, the city has launched a series of solutions such as building legal environment, financial policies, attract both domestic and foreign investment and cooperation…

According to the city's leader, Hanoi has started operating the online public service system at level 3 in all wards in 10 districts, and to all communes and wards in the near future. The traffic monitoring system is also being "smartized" with a series of cameras installed on many streets in the inner city area, deploying car park management for I-parking on a large-scale... and in the school year 2018-2019, Hanoi will manage the students with electronic records.

“Hanoi city is cooperating with leading technology corporations in the country and in the world, building electronic government architecture for Hanoi. In addition, the city will use the information technology services of enterprises from the data center to security services as well as line rental services, writing software services to minimize the time, to improve the facilities for people,” said Mr. Dang Vu Tuan, deputy director of the Hanoi Information and Communication Department.

In Da Nang, according to the leaders of the Department of Information and Communication, the city is leading in tourism, so the target of developing Smart City is to serve tourists, including traffic and services. Accordingly, visitors to Da Nang now just send messages to know where they are standing and how to get to the bus station they need, and when right vehicle will come.

With food, tourists just send a message and address, restaurant name with the syntax of antoanthucpham, they will receive information whether the restaurant has been granted a food safety certificate or not, if the certification has expired or not and the other information. “Even the cases related to influencing consumers due to food safety of this restaurant is also provided,” said the Department of Information and Communications.

On administration, through the 1022 switchboard, the people can completely look up all information related to administrative procedures in Da Nang as well as paperwork, and they can register the administrative procedures at home. We only need to type the words "thu tuc hanh chinh" (administrative procedures) and set the time, the function will send people to the house to carry out procedures. Of course the people have to pay a fee.”

Need a long-term strategy

According to urban experts, the ultimate goal of creating a Smart City is to serve the people, to improve the quality of people's lives under the pressure of urbanization and climate change. Thus, the people are the beneficiaries of those advantages, so the projects and targets on a Smart City are related to the convenience, minimal effort and cost but high efficiency on service to the people. On the other hand, it is also important to realize that a city is truly smart when it has intelligent citizens who build and develop the city.

In order to successfully build a Smart City, Mr. Dao Ngoc Nghiem, Vice Chairman of Hanoi Planning Association said that, the city leaders need a long-term goal and strategy when building a Smart City. In addition, it is necessary to improve the quality of human resources, promote communication and education in order to gradually form smart citizens and intelligent communities.

Mr. Nghiem also said that each city must have policies and regulations to use more efficient infrastructure and resources (transport infrastructure, environment, energy, tourism, construction and other resources) through the analysis of data and the maximum application of information technology, artificial intelligence to support the development of cultural, economic, social and healthy culture.

“Local people and communities must be effective in managing the city and make decisions using the electronic information system, raising collective intelligence, building city institutions through the internet, emphasizing on people's participation and co-creation of values,” Mr. Nghiem stressed.

After all, the construction of Smart City is important to the human factor, then to management and technology. Therefore, management agencies should pay attention to the socio-economic status, the living and working needs of the people, to form diverse living working communities, with the support of many smart technology applications at various levels.