Part of the 2025 ICF Delegation meeting with New Taipei City’s Mayor Hou
 

For the past three years, the Intelligent Community Forum has taken a delegation to attend the annual Smart City Summit & Expo and Net Zero City Expo (SCSE) in Taipei. From a small, largely Canadian delegation in the first year, the past two years have attracted significant numbers of international attendees to be part of ICF’s Delegation to the SCSE and associated site visits. This year, thirty-one delegates from Canada, USA, Brazil, Spain, and the Netherlands joined ICF Canada and ICF Taiwan’s organizers to attend the SCSE and undertake visits to meet the mayors of Taoyuan, New Taipei City, and Yunlin County. In each of these gatherings, in addition to the formalities, the mayors explained why their communities have become among the best smart cities and Intelligent Communities in Taiwan. They noted that they are leading in applying digital communications technologies in health, emergency response, education, traffic control, urban planning, and overall quality of life for their citizens. As the delegation learned over the course of their visit to Taiwan – these communities excel in not only digital connectivity and AIoT applications, they also train knowledge workers and the talent to innovate and become global entrepreneurs. And with innovation, they share their prosperity with all of their citizens who have developed a culture of engagement and respect for sustainability, all key factors of smart cities to evolve into true Intelligent Communities.
 

On June 19-20, New Taipei City (NTPC) hosted the 2024 Top7 Conference, “AI: The Innovation Accelerator,” which brought together city leaders and technology experts from Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America.

The Smart City Summit and Expo (SCSE) in Taipei is one of the largest conferences and expositions for smart city technology and trends in the world, taking place in a nation that produces 60% of the world’s semiconductors. From March 19 through 22, SCSE will host 150,000 visitors at convention centers in Taipei and Kaohsiung. Joining them will be an ICF delegation from cities, technology companies, universities and public-private accelerators organized in partnership with the ICF Institute in Taiwan and the national organization ICF Taiwan.

Guiding Policy in Hsinchu County

Taiwan’s Hsinchu County, located in northern Taiwan, invited the ICF Institute’s Smart City Project Team to take a leading role in the county’s smart city or Intelligent Community initiatives beginning in February 2023. After a careful review of policies and comparison with those of other cities and counties, the Team offered recommendations designed to better coordinate policies to achieve a common set of goals. The Team then provided training to departments within the county government and facilitated public workshops. The workshops provided a chance to communicate the county’s vision to citizens and gain valuable feedback from them.

Taoyuan has kicked off an exciting initiative “She smart Taoyuan”, further in collaborating with gender perspective into city and policy design and celebrating what women have accomplished in this field.

(Taoyuan, Taiwan & New York, USA – March 9, 2022) – Undeterred by the global pandemic, Taoyuan City continued its City Leaders Conversations Series, co-hosted by the Intelligent Community Forum. The Series engages Taoyuan’s fellow cities in conversations intended to share best practices among those that are leading the “smart city” or Intelligent Community movements. After conversations with Binh Duong (Vietnam), Eindhoven (Netherlands), and Edmonton (Canada), Taoyuan engaged with Vienna (Austria) in February for an excellent discussion with a famous city that is pushing forward with a net-zero emissions policy and programs in the areas of industry and water management that are forward-looking.

The Vienna session included Wolfgang Hassler, Deputy Head of Department for Economic Affairs, Labour and Statistics of Vienna; Sabine Ohler, Director of International Business, Vienna Business Agency; Christian Tino Terraneo, CEO of Austrian Technology Corporation (ATC); Christian Weinguny, CEO of Maschinen - Umwelttechnik - Transportanlagen (M-U-T). Louis Zacharilla, Co-Founder of the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) moderated the conversation, which was hosted by Yu Wan-Ju (Karen), General Director, Department of Information Technology of Taoyuan City. The group discussed economic sustainability with a particular emphasis on digital transformation and its role in water management strategies.

Taoyuan, Taiwan/New York, USA – February 7 2022 - With adversities like the global pandemic and climate change constantly threatening our livelihood, sustainable development presents itself as a strategy to cope with such issues. To find solutions, Department of Information Technology of Taoyuan City Government thus became the first to partner with the internationally acclaimed Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) www.intelligentcommunity.org to host a series of “Taoyuan x ICF: City-Leaders Conversation.”

Taoyuan has kicked off an exciting initiative “She smart Taoyuan”, further in collaborating with gender perspective into city and policy design and celebrating what women have accomplished in this field.

Taoyuan, Taiwan & New York, USA – 10 January 2022 - Topics such as net-zero carbon emission and sustainability have become key issues to the global community. Undeterred by the coronavirus pandemic, Department of Information Technology of Taoyuan City Government partnered with the internationally acclaimed ICF as a front runner in 2022. As a prelude to the Smart City Summit & Expo 2022 held in Taiwan, Taoyuan City will co-host with ICF the series of “Taoyuan x ICF: City-Leaders Conversation” with fellow intelligent communities on how to best respond to the challenges at hand.

With the goal of leading the upgrading and transformation of industries and the development of digital technology, the Taiwan government is implementing the "Smart City Taiwan Project" through the Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The central government, local governments and industries are working together to develop innovative applications in 22 counties and cities across Taiwan in six major areas, including "health," "governance/security," "transportation," "agriculture," "education" and "tourism/retail," through the Public-Private-People Partnership mechanism. Since its inception, the project has yielded fruitful results, with about 300 enterprises participating and developing 223 smart services that benefit 8.54 million people. In addition to solving local problems, the project has also opened up international development opportunities for industry players.