In recent years, countries in different parts of the world are trying to soothe the impacts brought by the rapid concentration of population in cities by solving the problems of transportation, education, medicine, environmental protection, governance and more. They have begun to promote high-tech solutions applicable to various services in order to construct smart cities. The United Nation also regards smart cities as an important issue. Likewise, it has been an important task for every city to become a smart city.
Concerning the development of a smart city, Kaohsiung regards its citizens as the core. It uses innovative technology to link all service items, applying it to governing the city efficiently. Promoting people’s livelihoods and an industrial revolution, it endeavors to improve people’s quality of living and create valule for the city. In recent years, the Kaohsiung City Government has worked ceaselessly to make breakthroughs in the current framework of thought. Absorbing the experiences of different sectors, it makes the best use of information technology. Up to now, it has developed more than one hundred smart services to meet people’s needs.
The smart services promoted by Kaohsiung City Government won high acclaim from different sectors. For example, it topped the rankings in the CommonWealth Magazine in 2016 and the Wealth Magazine in 2017-2018 in the category of smart cities; national ranking also climbed to No.3 from No. 10 on Global Views Monthly in 2017. For instance, the “Love PASS Cloud Service Platform” in the culture category won the Innovative Award in Cloud IoT in 2016. The “Ambulance 12 Leads ECG” in the firefighting category won the 8th Taiwan Healthy City and Senior Citizens Friendly City Award in 2016 and the outstanding award in 2017 Emergency Medicine Annual Conference. The “Kaohsiung-Pingtung Area Traffic Control Systems Integration” and “4G Intelligent Transportation Service Application” in the traffic category won Award of the innovative application for Smart City in 2017. The “Farmers Instant Human Resources Demand Platform – AgriMax in the agriculture category and the “Action Household Office and e-Service Online” won the 2018 Smart City Innovative Application Award. All these are strong proofs of the outstanding accomplishments of the development of Kaohsiung into a smart city.
In addition to introducing the application of the latest technology, we also apply information technology to the governing of the city in various aspects. We develop services from the people’s perspective. Integrating administrative resources with our efforts, we open up resources for inter-departmental use. For example, we established the common cloud equipment room for the installation of different hardware and software to maximize the benefits of resources. The data of different departments are linked with API technology as the information platform – a reservoir for the storage of the city’s data for speeding up the circulation among different departments. After analyzing the data, we present real time city information in a visual manner for quick enquiry. It also provides the Kaohsiung City Government more objective and more scientific references in decision making.
About the promotion of a smart city, the Kaohsiung City Government plays the role of a bellwether to develop smart industry in both private and public collaboration. We encourage enterprises to participate in urban construction to develop local smart industry links to promote full scale upgrade of industries and established collaborations between the public and private sectors. At the same time, we also opened the New Asia Bay area, constructed the underground rail tracks, and constructed Hamaxing, the light rail zones, and the 205 Arsenal Factory area as testing ground for smart services. As a result, we will promote successful cases in different spots of the city gradually.
There should be sustaining industry in a city. Of course, we need an excellent living environment to make sustaining development possible. Therefore, we promote electric motorcycles, green energy, and environmental monitoring to construct a quality and livable environment for our citizens. In the future, we will become smarter and able to govern the city more efficiently, to make people’s lives more convenient, to make industry prosper and the environment develop sustainably. In short, Kaohsiung will become an international class livable smart city.