ESPOO, Finland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The second-largest city in Finland, Espoo has won the international Intelligent Community Awards 2018. The theme of the contest was ‘humanizing data’. This refers to the use of data for people-oriented service development.

Espoo’s strength in the competition lay in its client-oriented way of sustainably developing a smart city – in other words, Espoo wants to involve its residents.

The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) has named the world’s Top7 Intelligent Communities of 2018. This is the think tank’s 16th annual Top7 list of regions, cities or towns that have gone, in ICF’s words, “from smart city to intelligent community.”

This year’s list includes communities from four nations, with Taiwan contributing three, Canada two communities and Australia and Finland one each. The seven will travel to London in June where one will go on to be named the Intelligent Community of the Year, succeeding Melbourne, Australia, the reigning community.

During a Top7 site visit to Winnipeg, ICF co-founder Louis Zacharilla discussed the city's efforts as one of the Top7 Intelligent Communities of 2018. Click on the image below to watch the clip - the segment begins at 17:18.

A judge who toured Hamilton to determine whether it is the most "intelligent" community in the world said the city is an "astounding" place and its citizens recognize that.

"There's a real pride here," said Robert Bell, co-founder of the Intelligent Community Forum, a U.S.-based think tank founded 15 years ago that studies and promotes the world's best cities and how those models can be reproduced elsewhere.

"The number of people I've talked to who've said, 'I'm a lifelong Hamiltonian, and boy this is just the greatest place on the planet.'"

The IoTCC and InsightaaS have released a major new report that explores challenge and opportunity in the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in smart communities. IoValue: intelligence in Community Ecosystems is the first report in a series of best practice papers co-developed by members of the IoTCC, led by Mary Allen of InsightaaS.

The concept of “smart” city or community is not new; in fact, city operators have been using network connectivity and computing for a long time, deploying technology to support digital processes for applications ranging from back office records to property tax billing to the control of water and electricity distribution. But 'intelligent community' is another proposition, and one of the first questions addressed by the report working group is how to describe it and who to include – is intelligent community restricted to municipal government, or are there other groups involved, and what are its physical limits? The IoTCC group used the following diagram to illustrate the collaborative nature of the community.

新竹縣政府結合客家文化藝術、漫畫、鐵道元素打造內灣線為文化藝術傳承基石及國際漫畫夢工場的願景，將內灣國小閒置空間結合在地文化特色、動漫元素及一線九驛，整體規畫「劉興欽動漫教育博物館」已正式揭牌啟用，包含漫畫互動區、親子漫畫閱讀區、時空走廊區、漫畫創作區、穿越時空區及人人是漫畫家等六區，縣長邱鏡淳期許能推動地方繁榮發展、引燃提升竹縣觀光能見亮點。

Chiayi, Tainan and Taoyuan have been named among the top seven Intelligent Communities for 2018, the New York-based think tank Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) said on Thursday.

The other four nominees in the list are Ipswich, Australia, Hamilton and Winnipeg, Canada, and Espoo, Finland, the forum said.

What would it look like for St. Albert residents to be able to track buses, snowplows and garbage pick-up in real time?

Residents might get to test that out sooner than they think. As the city pushes forward on its Smart City focus, digital access to that type of information becomes a reality through a proposed Smart City application.

“The dream is … that (residents) be able to access municipal services in an ‘a la carte’ manner,” said Travis Peter, manager of Smart City and innovation for the city.

“That’s smart. That’s actually data, that’s information at your fingertips.”

New smart-city digital technologies involving the Internet of Things are being adopted by the nation’s largest cities and could help spur economic development through industrial transformation. Some of the leading examples so far are the eTag electronic toll collection system, the EasyCard payment platform, and the Wi-Fi system on the Taoyuan Metro. Under planning is a smart-machinery center in Taichung.

The Taiwan economy is performing respectably this year on the back of ascendant global demand for electronics products. In the January-March period, exports jumped 15.1% year-on-year, the fastest growth in six years. Economists say gross domestic product should expand 2% this year, the best performance since 2014.

Many have theorized that tools like broadband networks and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors — technologies that provide access to information through telecommunications — can improve the lives of residents. However, few have gone directly to residents to understand how these tools, commonly referred to in academic literature as smart city information and communication technologies (ICTs), truly affect city dwellers. The authors of “The effects of successful ICT-based smart city services: From citizens' perspectives” attempt to do just that, surveying residents to make an empirical case that smart city ICT applications do indeed improve quality of life. However, the article concludes that integrating residents’ needs and preferences into application development processes is critical to creating an effective smart city infrastructure.