Taipei Smart City Summit & Expo is one of Asia's major smart city and IoT events. Every year a number of government leaders and industry elite from around the world will gather together in Taipei, Taiwan, to share their insights on smart city development strategies and ideas. This year MIC (Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute) also participated and discovered several areas that are noteworthy.

Highlight #1: Smart Government is the Key to Smart City

Amsterdam of the Netherlands and Kansas City of the United States have both valued the importance of uniting the power of research, government, academia, industry sectors with their people. But first, the government must transform itself and have a strategic urban plan and smart city blueprint in place.

Highlight #2: 90% of City Data to be Delivered by LPWAN Networks

With the advent of the next-generation technology like 5G or IoT, we now can access the internet via all sorts of mobile devices. An access network has been changed from the wired to wireless, and LAN (Local Area Network) to other heterogeneous network integration applications like WAN (Wide Area Network) and LPWAN (Low Power WAN). For instance, Sigfax has started to deploy the LPWAN network in 32 countries, including six cities of Taiwan. And a number of vendors from 17 countries around the world have announced their plan to deploy networks with LoRa technology, including Taiwanese companies Gemtek and FHNet.

Highlight #3: Green Building Gets Everything Connected with a Smartphone App

Green building is now more about prediction, maintenance, health, and comfort. The Taiwan Intelligent Building Association has proposed to use the "The Edge" building in Amsterdam as a benchmark to build a green building with a smartphone app. By introducing community design, building construction, and intelligent application solutions, Taiwan's Smart Ecoland Alliance unveiled a complete, integrated smart community platform at this year's event as one of the major spotlights.

Highlight #4: Solar Energy and Offshore Wind Necessitated Government Support

The ultimate goal of building a smart city is to rest assured that the development of the city and the quality of life for all living in it is sustainable. The Taiwanese government is estimated to inject NTD 1.8 trillion (USD59.2 billion) in electricity generated by solar energy and offshore wind in 2025. To help maximize solar energy and offshore wind utilization, Germany WPD has set up 48 solar energy stations in Taiwan.

Highlight #5: The Demand for the Eco-friendly and Sharing Environment Spurs Smart Transportation Development

Having green energy and digitalization as core values, smart transportation has been deployed to cater to the need for seamless, sharing, safe, smooth, and sustainable 5G applications and provide more convenient MaaS (Mobility-as-a-service). This year Taiwanese smart transportation solution providers demonstrated their driverless smart parking solution with low-carbon emissions, cross-border telematics apps (e.g. UBI, Usage-based Insurance), electric scooters/vehicles sharing/rental systems, and urban traffic flow monitoring and analysis platforms that are worth further observation.

Highlight # 6: Smart Surveillance with Precise ID Recognition and AI Technology Provide Better Connected Security Services

Smart surveillance systems are habitually used in home, office, society, government, and internet environments. The adoption of smart surveillance systems can provide better life safety, property protection, and data privacy protection environment. The highlight this year focused on precise ID recognition systems, AI image-enabled security monitoring & learning systems, street lights with an IVS integrated monitoring services, ubiquitous reporting platform, and intelligent disaster relief command platform in conjunction with wearables and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Highlight #7 Intelligent Imaging Analytics Helps Target Customers Needs More Precisely

Future retailers need to master new devices, new media, and new distribution channels to fast reach and interact with their target customers. The use of big data analytics will help us interpret customer behaviors, provide business benefits, and create a positive user experience to earn offline customers' enthusiasm. The focus of this year's expo was on how a facial recognition system could operate together with a digital signage and intelligent vending machine and how the use of big data analytics could be implemented for crowd analysis platform and store logistics management platform to bring real applications and examples under such trend to life.

All told, through the latest LPWAN technology and the PPP (public–private partnership) cooperative arrangement that initiates dialogues and discussions, smart city is about bringing people a happier and more convenient life with a variety of intelligent applications such as smart building, smart energy, smart transportation, smart surveillance, and smart retail. Thus we can conclude by saying that "smart city is an important application field of IoT."

To see more about this report, please visit: IoT Communication Technology: Patent, Business Opportunity, and Brand Strength Analysis; Smart Cities: Their Rise, Key Success Factors, and Business Opportunities

For future receipt of press releases, or more information about MIC research findings, please contact MIC Public Relations.

About MIC

Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC), based in Taipei, Taiwan, was founded in 1987. MIC is Taiwan's premier IT industry research and consulting firm providing intelligence, in-depth analysis, and strategic consulting services on global IT product and technology trends, focusing on markets and industries in Asia-Pacific. MIC is part of the Institute for Information Industry. https://mic.iii.org.tw/english