Limburg is one of the world's most innovative regions. Every year, the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) selects 21 regions worldwide that excel in innovation, knowledge development, and sustainability. Limburg is part of this selection - the so-called Smart21 - and has been nominated for the title of 'The Intelligent Community of the Year'.

Grey County has been named one of the Smart21 Communities of 2025 by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF).

The recognition highlights cities and regions using technology and innovation to drive growth and improve quality of life.

For the third consecutive year and fourth time since 2017, Grey County has been named one of the world’s Smart21 communities of the year by the Intelligent Communities Forum (ICF). The announcement came on March 6 at the Communities in Transition conference in Hamilton, Ontario.

Smart, we are in Durham Region. Kingston too. We know this because the global Intelligent Communities Forum had us tested.

For the fourth year in a row the Region of Durham has been recognized as one of the Smart 21 Communities in the world, an honour that speaks to the “innovation and partnership” happening in the region, which has embraced a ‘technology for all’ philosophy.

Communities from nine nations over five continents named as semi-finalists in ICF’s annual Intelligent Community of the Year Awards Program

(March 6, 2025 – New York, NY, USA & Hamilton, ON, Canada) – At the conclusion of a conference hosted by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), Artefact Social and the Hamilton Technology Centre, ICF today named the world’s Smart21 Communities of 2025. The announcement was made at a special evening event after the Communities in Transition conference in the host city of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

The selection of the Smart21 Communities of the Year begins the semi-finalist phase in ICF’s annual Awards Program. In June, ICF will announce the Top7 Intelligent Communities as finalists in the Awards program at the Top7 Conference & Announcement in Las Rozas de Madrid, Spain. The program will conclude when ICF names the 2025 Intelligent Community of the Year at the ICF Global Summit in Binh Duong, Vietnam in October. One of these twenty-one communities named today will succeed Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, the 2024 Intelligent Community of the Year.

Each year, the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) Awards Program offers a series of high-profile events to inspire and connect leaders from across the globe. Mark your calendars for these key conferences in the 2025 Awards cycle, each hosted in an Intelligent Community renowned for its forward-thinking initiatives and unique contributions to the global Intelligent Community movement.

Coquitlam is one of the world’s Smart21 communities for a third year.

Last month, at the end of the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) in Taiwan, the organization announced five Canadian municipalities, counties and regions had made the annual list as a digital leader:

Food is life – and as long as it is, Pingtung County will be important to the people of Taiwan. Agriculture, aquaculture and fishing dominate its economy today, with specialties in roses, mangos, lemons, coffee, cocoa and, a Taiwanese delicacy, lotus mist. Eight national and county parks, hot springs, Hakka and aboriginal villages and some of Taiwan’s most beautiful landscape make it a tourist destination as well. Its 800,000 people live in 33 townships scattered across 2,700 square kilometers.

Pingtung faces the challenges of all rural counties around the world: distance, an aging population, the out-migration of youth seeking opportunity and the need to diversify an economy dependent on the low-margin raising of food. Unlike so many such places, however, it is attacking the challenges creatively and persistently to generate prosperity while preserving its treasured ways of life.

Connectivity for Economy and Life

The county partners with national government and the private sector to create and expand the digital networks that support tourism, agriculture and quality of life. Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) has constructed a gigabit backbone network to connect and upgrade fixed and wireless local networks throughout the county. Special focus goes to 8 townships of indigenous peoples located in the mountains, for which the network provides free outdoor wireless broadband. The ambitious project has succeeded in bringing gigabit broadband service to 95% of the county.

Another partnership has focused on providing dedicated connectivity for local industry. Private 5G wireless is becoming a standard for factory automation, and MODA has introduced 5G networks and applications to support meat processing, remote inspection and monitoring of refrigeration for food safety to meet international standards. With 13,000 base stations in facilities across the county, the network is supporting 97 dedicated applications in transportation, manufacturing, food and healthcare.

Creating Opportunities for Youth

Pingtung also invests in retaining its youth while equipping them with STEM and technology skills to inject new digital talent into the economy. The county’s three universities provide higher education and teacher and vocational education. They are already graduating 800 students per year in STEM-related fields. Students and graduates can join the Pingtung Digital Youth Center, which serves as a bridge from school to work and entrepreneurship. The Youth Center offers professional enhancement courses that prepare students for work in local companies, and teams have launched new firms including a producer of light sculptures and a drone services company that remotely patrols and monitors farmland.

Faced with labor shortages in farming, the Pingtung AI Agri Hub has introduced a drone training system to promote development of a drone industry. Offering license training, operational skills training and job counseling, the Hub has attracted more than 20 startup teams focusing on drone spraying, agricultural product sales, agricultural tourism and coffee care.

Smarter Agriculture, Aging, Travel and Business

The county collaborates with national government on projects aiming to accelerate innovation in public and private spheres. The Pingtung Agricultural Biotechnology Park has attracted more than 100 tenant companies bringing combined investment of US$473 million into the county. One has developed a dynamic Aquaculture Calendar application that significantly boosts the productivity of fish farming while improving visibility into operations. Another has created Aquadlink, a system for remote monitoring of key environmental conditions from temperature and dissolved oxygen to salinity and pH. These technologies have already led to a 20% increase in output and 30% reduction in electricity use in the county’s fish farms and are being exported to other southeast Asian countries.

A public-private partnership has produced digital tools that help farmers integrate the international GRI 13 Agricultural Sustainability Guidelines into their operations. The platform provides pest and disease predictions and alerts, recommends pest control application and forecasts climate impacts on crop growth. Compliance with the low-carbon Guidelines is expected to increase the brand value and selling price of Pingtung crops.

With tourism being a major industry, Pingtung worked with national government and private companies to deploy a mix of smart parking meters, license-plate readers and real time bus information via app to reduce traffic congestion in the most popular tourist destinations. The systems have reduced parking search time by 20%.

Inclusion and Engagement

To entice small-to-midsize (SME) businesses to adopt digital technology, the county adopted a MODA program called TCloud. After passing an online review of their digital readiness, SMEs receive digital points that provide a 50% discount on hardware and software. Over 550 SMEs have adopted mobile payment, e-commerce, point-of-sale, inventory management and online reservation systems that meet the growing demand for digital service.

Digital training for seniors has served nearly 200,000 elders, while investment in hardware and software in schools and Digital Opportunity Centers is delivering IT training on computers and mobile devices, with strong participation from women. The county also recruits college students to serve in remote elementary and middle schools, where they tutor disadvantaged students through video conferencing and online learning platforms.

As an island nation subject to typhoons and earthquakes, Taiwan focuses national and local efforts on sustainability and resilience. The county operates its own Renewable Energy Office, which has deployed Taiwan’s first floating solar panels and marine power projects. Green building regulations encourage also building owners to install solar panels. By August 2022, Pingtung became the first Taiwanese county to integrate 1 GW of renewable energy into the grid. Through these multi-faceted efforts, Pingtung County is raising the productivity of its industries and preparing its people to prosper in a digital future.

Population: 798,940

Website: www.pthg.gov.tw

Smart21 2024 | 2025

Yunlin County, comprised of 19 townships and the county seat of Douliu, occupies the fertile Chianan Plain on the western coast of Taiwan. Its rich farmland and many rivers have made the county an agrarian center, producing crops such as pomelo, tea leaves, suan cai, papaya and melon on 70 percent of the county’s land area. The coast is lined with fishing ports and home to aquaculture and fish processing companies. The third contributor to Yunlin’s economy is its natural beauty, which attracts tourists to its landscape as well as to prominent Mazu temples and the first temple theme park of Taiwan.

Agriculture, fisheries and tourism have great value – but they are not strong foundations for prosperity and growth in the digital century. The county faces a demographic challenge familiar to every farming economy: the out-migration of young talent seeking better opportunities while the existing farming and fishery workforce grows older. Yunlin’s response is a multi-level strategy focusing on workforce and business development to retain its youth and generate greater opportunity for all.

The country brings important assets to this effort. Yunlin is home to four universities, dozens of secondary and hundreds of primary schools and the National Yunlin Special Education School. They provide a path toward making Yunlin a place where innovation thrives, without sacrificing what its residents and visitors value.  

Smart Campuses Prepare Students for High-Tech Work

In recent years, Yunlin County has made significant strides in ensuring robust broadband access across its educational institutions. The county provides all its elementary and middle schools with 100% wireless coverage and has distributed over 30,000 tablets to students. All 187 elementary and middle schools have also introduced smart student ID cards, which allow parents to access the Smart Campus App to stay informed and involved with their children’s education.

Partnership plays a crucial role in the county’s development, from its universities to programs of national government. Yunlin County’s Smart Education Center, branded as the Starbase of Crescent Harbor, immerses students in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) technologies. Its specialized facilities cover artificial intelligence, the metaverse, 3D design and printing, smart agriculture and STEAM handicrafts. To reinforce these efforts, Yunlin has instituted an Information and Life Technology curriculum for 3rd to 6th graders, standardizing it across all schools beginning in the 2022 academic year. The county has simultaneously focused on more advanced digital training for teachers with a series of workshops, supported by the Office for Digital Learning Promotion, that teach digital learning methodologies. As of 2024, nearly 5,000 teachers across the county had completed one or more of these workshops.

The county government is also collaborating with the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology and National Formosa University to develop better courses for technical professionals and create more industrial-academic internships for students. From 2019 to 2022, local universities hosted corporate training courses for 22 companies with 1,757 attendees. Through internships, university students work with local industries to deploy technologies that improve the companies’ efficiency while bolstering the students’ tech skills.

Agricultural Innovation for a Sustainable Future

While working to develop the future workforce and encourage entrepreneurship, Yunlin is also driving a new vision for the future of its NT$89 billion (US$2.9bn) agricultural industry.  Through workshops with local industry leaders, farmer groups and community representatives, the county is developing a shared agricultural vision for the future that includes input from all parties.  

Yunlin County established the Climate Change Response Office in 2021 to spearhead these initiatives and align with Taiwan's goal of net zero emissions by 2050. In 2022, the county signed an MOU with Nahua University to provide devices to measure the carbon output of its farms and offer third-party verification and recommendations for local agricultural businesses. The following year, Yunlin partnered with YunTech to establish the Yunlin Zero Waste Transformation Integrated Services Hub, which provides a one-stop platform for businesses to access sustainability assistance and guidance. The platform allows businesses to apply for government subsidies. In 2023 alone, Yunlin County held training sessions for 33 local businesses and helped secure approximately NT$47 million in government subsidies to help them establish greener practices.

On the technology side, Yunlin County has launched a series of projects to help farmers adopt digital management technologies and adapt to a smaller agricultural workforce. As of 2024, the county had completed eight smart automation agricultural projects, including developing Smart Greenhouses outfitted with environmental sensors monitoring temperature, humidity and soil conductivity. Another project established Smart Poultry Houses with two local companies, where IoT platforms monitor conditions for the animals and provide cleaning services, allowing four people to manage up to 50,000 livestock.

Engaging Youth in the Future of Yunlin

Community participation is at the heart of Yunlin County's development philosophy. The Local Revitalization Office, established in 2019, has been instrumental in organizing over 400 consensus meetings with civil society, fostering a collaborative approach to shaping Yunlin's future. The county has focused particularly on increasing youth participation in the community. Yunlin County established the Central Youth Hub in April 2023, which serves as an event venue with public facilities and classrooms for rent. Public- and private-sector partnerships have funded co-working spaces in the Hub to give young entrepreneurs a place to gather and work on their ideas.

The Central Youth Hub hosts many local talent development activities, including Master Trend Lectures, 14 Lessons for Young People, Local Culture Exploration and Investigation and Exchange Life Experience, all of which are aimed at promoting awareness of local issues and taking initiative in the younger generations. The Hub also collaborates with experts from various fields to provide vocational counseling services via phone or in person.

To further facilitate interest in starting businesses in Yunlin County, the government commissioned YunTech to create a Yunlin Youth Entrepreneurship Subsidy and Cultivation project. It provides funding to residents age 20-40 who are starting businesses in the county, which has empowered 22 young individuals to realize their entrepreneurial aspirations across diverse fields and thrive in their hometowns.

In our digital century, it can seem that all the rewards of innovation go to big cities. Yunlin County provides a prime example of how rural regions can innovate across education, technology and community engagement to meet their challenges and chart a course to a prosperous and sustainable future.

Population: 664,963

Website: www.yunlin.gov.tw

Smart21 2024 | 2026

Top7 2024 | 2026

The city of Izmir, known in classical antiquity as Smyma, has more than 3,000 years of recorded history and has been a human settlement since the Neolithic period. It has played a key role in the region's economy for centuries as a major trade port city and population center and is currently home to over 3 million citizens. Izmir is also home to many remarkable landmarks, including the Agora Open Air Museum of Izmir, the Kemeralti bazaar originally established by the Ottomans and the Izmir Bird Paradise sanctuary, which contains 205 recorded species of birds. Cultural events such as the Izmir International Festival, the Izmir European Jazz Festival and the International Izmir Short Film Festival draw visitors from around the world each year.

But Izmir’s story is one of dire challenges as well as flourishing tourism and trade. The Greco-Turkish War of the early 20th century devastated the city, which was then gradually rebuild under the Turkish Republic beginning in 1923. Nearly a century later, Izmir was struck by the Aegean Sea earthquake and tsunami. The city has treated these disasters and its recovery as opportunities to modernize itself and provide new opportunities for its economy and populace to grow.

Free Public Broadband Access

In 2015, Izmir launched the Wizmirnet project, an ambitious initiative that aimed to provide citizens with wireless, high-speed, free and unlimited internet access across the city. Currently, free internet service is offered at 550 locations, including 85 parks and squares, and extends services to public transportation options such as 20 ferries, 60 buses and 17 metro stations, along with rural areas encompassing 79 villages. This extensive network ensures uninterrupted communication for all citizens, enhancing digital connectivity in both urban and rural settings.

Training through the Vocational Factory

Izmir places significant emphasis on equipping its citizens with applicable skills through its Vocational Factory, which evolved from IZMEB Centers established in 2006. Offering free courses across approximately 215 branches in 33 centers, the Vocational Factory provides training aimed at creating a qualified workforce aligned with labor market needs. These programs are designed to counter unemployment and drive sustainable economic growth in the region. Since 2017, the Employment Development and Support Unit has bolstered this effort, focusing on accommodating the demands of the labor market. Since their establishment, these initiatives have contributed to a steady increase in employment rates.

Establishing an Entrepreneurship Center

A keystone of Izmir’s growth is its vibrant Entrepreneurship Ecosystem. The Entrepreneurship Center Izmir, inaugurated in 2021 in partnership with TÜSİAD and supported by local universities, serves as the nucleus for nurturing local entrepreneurs. By offering resources, mentorship, and networking opportunities, the center supports startups and fosters innovation across various sectors including agriculture, sustainable transport and information technologies. Participants receive online and face-to-face training sessions and participate in meetings with industry leaders and investors, as well as gaining access to facilities like the Fabrication Laboratory Izmir for research and development. The Entrepreneurship Center’s program cycle includes determining a new theme, accepting applications, evaluation, training and acceleration, followed at the conclusion by sharing investment-ready projects with the public.

Each year, the center focuses on a new theme reflecting strategic priorities. In 2021, the spotlight was on Agricultural Entrepreneurship, followed by Smart and Sustainable Transportation in 2022 and Information Technologies in 2023. These programs encompass several stages – from basic training to mentoring and acceleration – culminating in events like Demo Day where entrepreneurial projects are presented to investors.

Improving Public Services and Ensuring Access

Izmir created its Metropolitan Municipality E-Transaction Center in 2008, which allows citizens to perform municipal transactions and access local services online. This initiative not only enhances service delivery but also promotes transparency, accountability and efficiency within the administration. Additionally, the city developed a corporate WhatsApp application supported by AI in 2021 to offer instant information on municipal services. Services accessed through this platform include complaint submission, tracking inquiries and accessing information on transportation, events and IZSU transactions. The artificial intelligence component ensures optimized responses and swift resolutions. The WhatsApp application is currently used by approximately 20% of Izmir’s population and the city aims to improve those numbers in future years.

Making use of the internet availability provided by Wizmirnet, the LoRaWAN project uses low-power sensors and wireless communication to monitor and gather data on a range of urban factors, including weather conditions and natural disasters. The data collected via 20 radio towers integrated with meteorological and temperature modules covers 80% of the city. This initiative assists authorities in effectively managing urban risks. Izmir has further digitized the process of reporting and handling disasters as well via the Acil Izmir (Emergency Izmir) Mobile Application, which allows a citizen to report their current condition to fire brigades and other disaster relief workers instantly.

Using AI to Improve Quality of Life

Harnessing the power of AI, Izmir has developed several initiatives aimed at improving urban living conditions. The Carbon Map project uses AI to calculate air quality and carbon emissions at district and neighborhood levels, guiding reforestation efforts to enhance air quality. Additionally, the Smart Notification System leverages AI to detect forest fires before they spread, considerably enhancing emergency response times.

The city’s Dynamic Detection System employs AI and image processing to monitor city conditions in real-time, focusing on areas such as waste management and emergency situations. Izmir has currently completed its modeling and training phases for the Dynamic Detection System and is in the process of integrating the System through database connections.

Izmir is a compelling example of a modern city that intricately weaves technology, innovation and sustainability into the fabric of urban development. The city stands as a model for smart and sustainable urban planning and aims ever to improve as its projects expand and provide new opportunities for growth.

Population: 3,088,000

Website: www.izmir.gov.tr

Smart21 2024