The capital of Northern Ireland since its establishment in 1921 and also its largest city, Belfast stands on the banks of the River Lagan on the nation’s eastern coast. Beginning in the 1800s, the city served as a major port and hub of the Industrial Revolution in Ireland. Belfast was briefly the largest linen producer in the world during this time, earning the nickname “Linenopolis.” The city also hosted the world’s largest shipyard, which built the Titanic, among many other notable vessels. Though its status as a major global industrial center ended shortly after World War II, Belfast has made impressive efforts at expansion and regeneration in the last few decades. The city developed a major aerospace and missiles industry in addition to its still formidable shipyards and is undergoing urban renewal and acceleration with the aid of a £350 million investment by the UK Government.

Connecting and Educating the Future Workforce

Beginning in 2017, Belfast developed the Urban Digital Futures program to provide digital knowledge training and workshops for primary and post-primary school students. The program provided over 900 educators with resources and training across 20 post-primary and 16 primary schools. In addition to digital skills and content creation training, the program also connected involved schools with local businesses, particularly in growth sectors, to provide work experience for students and further valuable resources.

In 2020, the national government launched Project Stratum with the goal of bringing at least 30Mbs broadband coverage to all households in Northern Ireland. The £165 million project connected the first premises in 2021 with complete rollout expected by 2024. It builds on Project Kelvin, which saw the transatlantic submarine cable looped around Northern Ireland to provide connectivity to even the most remote regions. Belfast seized on the opportunity created by Project Stratum to begin educating its youth in the use of digital technologies that will soon be available to all in the region through this expanded connectivity. The city expanded its Urban Digital Futures program to include a new Digital Futures program aimed at supporting graduates of post-primary education. The newest project has secured £1 million funding and is expected to begin serving graduates shortly.

The Belfast Digital Partnership to Create an Innovation District

To encourage innovation and urban regeneration in Belfast, the City Council formed a partnership with Queen’s University, Ulster University, Belfast Harbour, Invest NI and Catalyst Inc. in 2019. The Belfast Digital Partnership aims to establish an innovation district covering 400 acres from the city center around the new Ulster University campus to the Catalyst in Queen’s Island. The district will foster a place-based approach to cluster growth in fintech, healthtech and Greentech by providing an optimal, supportive neighborhood for technologists and researchers, particularly in the life and health sciences sector. The innovation district will include pervasive wireless connectivity, funded by the Belfast City Deal Infrastructure Enabling Fund and a citizen-focused engagement program. The project also aims to address transportation issues, such as over-reliance on private car travel in the smart district, connectivity issues to Queen’s island and the challenges expected in developing a post-Covid city center. With so many entrepreneurs in one place, the district will also provide both Queen’s University and Ulster University with opportunities to enhance their research programs, allowing them to support business developers and innovators in the area.

As part of the Belfast Digital Partnership, Belfast Harbour has also launched the Smart Port project. Through significant investments in 5G connectivity and open architecture data, the Smart Port plans to deploy a number of IoT, mobility and Community Platform solutions to enhance safety, sustainability and efficiency within the harbor and throughout Northern Ireland’s sea freight logistics chain. As of 2020, the Belfast Digital Partnership has submitted an outline business case for a £350 million investment from the central government to get the ambitious project up and running.

Growing the Economy and Improving Quality of Life Through the Belfast Region City Deal

The Belfast Region City Deal, launched in 2019, is a public-private partnership between the city government, the national government of Northern Ireland and local business partners. The City Deal seeks to improve connectivity and engagement throughout the city and to provide financial and other support to citizens to grow the economy and improve all aspects of modern life. The UK Government has committed to providing £350 million for the project with the NI Executive matching that contribution as well as an additional £150 million from Belfast Region City Deal partners. This massive investment will be put toward a wide variety of infrastructure, economic and health improvements.

Planned building improvements under the City Deal include over 3,000 new hotel bed spaces to attract and accommodate tourism, 830,000 new square feet of office space to accommodate new jobs in the city and 854 new social homes spread throughout the city. The Belfast City Council, Housing Executive, Department for Communities and other stakeholders are looking into further ways to improve housing supply in the Belfast City Center as well.

On the health front, the City Deal will invest millions in social innovation programs and initiatives, health improvement initiatives and suicide and self-harm prevention services. The Health and Social Care Board, with the support of a wide range of partners, has already begun a research and engagement program to reduce the number of winter deaths in the city each year due to cold weather. The program will improve support for those most at risk by removing barriers to accessing help and establishing a campaign to raise awareness of the availability of flu vaccinations.

Where Belfast was once a global center of industry, the city aims to improve on that vision in the modern world by creating a global center of health, innovation and growth available to all its current and future citizens.

Population: 343,542

Website: www.belfastcity.gov.uk

Smart21 2021 | 2022 | 2023

Photo by Rodrigo Silva

Centered around a city of just 14,000, the Alexandria Lakes Area is a tourism hot spot known for its over forty lakes and many resorts. The region is home to a wide variety of cultural events that draw large numbers of tourists and locals each year, including Art in Park in July, the Douglas County Fair in August, the Carlos Creek Winery’s Grape Stomp in September and an Apple Fest in October. The city of Alexandria, heart of the Lakes Area, features a number of public schools, the Alexandria Technical & Community College and its own museum that houses the Kensington Runestone, a 200-pound greywacke stone covered in runes that was discovered in central Minnesota in 1898. Alexandria also hosts the annual Vikingland Band Festival parade marching championship. It is often too easy for a region focused on drawing outsiders in for tourism revenue to ignore those who live and work in the area year-round, but that is not the story of the Alexandria Lakes Area. The region has focused heavily over the past twenty years on connecting and improving the lives of the nearly 40,000 people who call its beautiful lakes and shores home.

Connecting the Unconnected

The Alexandria Lakes Area has developed multiple major connectivity projects since the early 2000s, all with the goal of bringing greater adoption and connectivity options to the region’s sprawling rural communities. The CMETS (Central Minnesota Education Telecommunication Systems) deployment was created to share IT solutions between the area’s eight rural school districts, including providing broadband Internet, voice, video and teleconference options. Rural telecommunications providers collaborated to engineer a 10 Gigabit private ethernet network to connect the eight school districts. These providers maintain the network and lease it to the CMETS consortium, which provides distance learning resources through the network, allowing students to access college-level courses taught within and outside their school districts.

Outside the school system, rural providers are in the process of deploying fiber-optic broadband throughout the Lakes Area. One of those local providers, the Gardonville Cooperative Telephone Association, targets unserved and underserved residential areas, and has laid an average of fifty miles of fiber-optic cable per year. Gardonville’s infrastructure supports up to 10 Gigabit per second speeds for homes and businesses in the region. The company has also applied for and secured grants from Minnesota’s Border-to-Border organization to fund further fiber-optic deployment at greater rates.

Pitch Your Plan

To foster interest in local businesses and help new ones get off the ground, the Alexandria Lakes Area came up with the Pitch Your Plan business competition in 2018. The competition was made possible by collaboration among a large group of partners, including several investment, insurance and real estate companies, multiple consulting companies and the City of Alexandria and Alexandria Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce. Other local companies also contributed to the project alongside these partners to put together a $38,000 prize package, including goods, services and financial support for the competition’s winner. Pitch Your Plan attracted 33 business applicants with 10 semifinalists chosen to move on to a business plan bootcamp to fine-tune their plans. The competition featured a large number of semifinalist positions in order to provide the bootcamp’s training to many businesses other than the eventual winner in the hope that such training would help them succeed as well. This effort was successful as a few of those businesses that did not move on to the finals still established themselves and are growing today.

Pitch Your Plan opened its doors to the community at large once the competition narrowed down to 3 finalists with a luncheon at a local downtown theater, during which the 3 presented their final pitches to the judges. The winner was able to massively expand its fledgling business with the prize package and the other 2 finalists also went on to grow their businesses afterward, utilizing the lessons they had learned in the competition and the relationships they had built with their competitors and other local businesses. The Alexandria Lakes Area plans to host the next Pitch Your Plan competition in 2021.

Preparing the Next Generation for College and Beyond

Beginning in 2014, the Lakes Area established the Academies of Alexandria High School. The academies serve as mini-schools within the district’s public school, focusing on specific career training to help high school students better prepare for college and entering the workforce. All 9th graders in the academies go through the Freshman Exploration Academy. In the following years, students select 1 of 3 academies depending on their interests and career plans: the Engineering, Manufacturing Technologies and Natural Resources Academy, the Health Sciences and Human Services Academy or the Business, Communication and Entrepreneurship Academy. Each academy teaches core classes in math, English, social studies and science alongside more focused classes based on the academy’s career theme. The school district partners with local businesses and civic leaders to provide students with real-world examples and answer practical questions they may have about their career futures. These partnerships also provide access to internships and mentors within the community. Over 75% of seniors in the first graduating class from the Academies of Alexandria went on to college or career opportunities with more expected to benefit each year as the program is refined.

The City of Alexandria Comprehensive Plan Revision

Originally adopted in 1995, the City of Alexandria’s Comprehensive Plan has undergone multiple revisions and updates to better meet the needs of a growing and changing community. The Plan provides the citizens of Alexandria with an outline for future development, including chapters on land use, transportation, wastewater, water supply, storm water management, housing and parks and recreation. In 2018, the City released a Request for Proposals for planning services to start the process of updating its Plan, which had not been revised since 2007.

To make the Plan available and comprehensible to as many Alexandrians as possible, the City has made all of it available on its website, where it is fully searchable and downloadable. Citizens can access components and chapters of the Plan 24/7 via Dropbox and can provide ideas and public feedback via email and Social Pinpoint at any time. To reach even more members of the community, Alexandria’s local government set up “pop-up” booths at local events, including Art in the Park, Community Night Out and the Douglas County Fair to ask for input on changes to the plan and what areas of concern mattered most to local attendees. The City also set up one-on-one and small group interactions on the street in downtown Alexandria, as well as visioning and goals sessions at City Hall and a range of speaking engagements. These efforts bore fruit when the City received over 1,500 written and emailed comments, suggestions and concerns from event attendees. To address as many of these concerns as possible, the City allocated $52,400 for the Comprehensive Plan formal revision from the city’s annual budget for Plans and Studies. The public hearing process for the new Plan was completed in October 2019.

With the natural beauty of Alexandria’s lakes come the expected challenges of reaching remote citizens and providing opportunities for all. The Alexandria Lakes Area has met these challenges head-on and expects to grow into an ever more connected community as its programs reach fruition and beyond.

Population: 38,041

Website: www.alexandriamn.org

Smart21 2021 | 2022

Photo by Omar David Sandoval Sida. Used under Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Durham Region has been recognized as one of the Smart21 Communities of the Year for 2021, which Durham Region’s Sandra Austin, director of strategic initiatives, says is a “positive step forward for Durham.”

The awards, presented by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), recognize the world’s leading municipalities that are successfully leveraging data and digital assets to develop inclusive and prosperous communities.

NORTHEASTERN MINNESOTA — The Arrowhead Intelligent Region (AIR) initiative, a partnership between Iron Range Resources & Rehabilitation and Blandin Foundation, is building on the momentum and bringing to regional scale the work and vision of 10 Iron Range Broadband Communities (IRBC) that have implemented nearly 125 projects in the past four years. IRBC broadband champions and regional developers are joining forces to think bigger about the role of broadband access and use in local economies.

Coquitlam is up for a major international award as a “smart city.”

Last week, the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) named Coquitlam as one of 21 municipalities in the running for the title of 2021 Intelligence Community of the Year.

The field will be narrowed on June 24 when seven finalists are announced; the winner is named in October at an annual summit of digital analysts.

Communities from eight nations, including Vietnam and the United Kingdom, named this year

(24 February 2021 – Township of Langley, City of Maple Ridge & New York City) – At the conclusion of a virtual conference hosted by the Township of Langley and the City of Maple Ridge in British Columbia, Canada, and in a simultaneous global announcement online from its New York City headquarters, the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) today named the world’s Smart21 Communities of 2021.

Selection of this group of regions, cities and towns begins the think tank’s annual nine-month process which will conclude when ICF names the 2021 Intelligent Community of the Year in October 2021 at the ICF Summit. Each has applied the six principles of the ICF Method to begin building inclusive economic prosperity, social health and cultural richness, which together make a community strong and resilient. Most have been working on their programs for several years.

The City of Maple Ridge and the Township of Langley are teaming up to host the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) Smart21 Conference this month.

The virtual event, themed “From Surviving to Thriving,” will take place from Feb. 22-24. It will bring together delegates from the business, government and non-profit sectors who have implemented smart technologies in communities around the world, said a press release from the City of Maple Ridge

Announcement to be part of a 2.5-day conference, “From Surviving to Thriving” using the ICF Method

(New York, NY, USA; Maple Ridge, BC, Canada and the Township of Langley, BC, Canada – September 10, 2020) – The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) today named Maple Ridge and the Township of Langley in British Columbia, Canada as co-hosts of the February 2021 ICF Smart21 Conference: From Surviving to Thriving using the ICF Method. The Smart21 Communities announcement will take place as part of a 2.5-day conference from February 21-23, 2021.

Many communities are by now familiar with the annual selection and awards process of ICF. Selecting the Smart21, then the Top7 and ultimately the most Intelligent Community of the Year occurs in several phases and in many ways. There are rigorous quantitative evaluations conducted by an outside consultancy, field trips, a review by an independent panel of leading experts/academic researchers and a vote by a larger group of experts.

Although communities like to focus on the #1 spot, the biggest distinctions are not between the #1 and the others in the Top7, but between the Smart21 and the Top7. An especially important part of the selection of the Top7 from the Smart21 is an independent panel’s assessment of the projects and initiatives that justify a community’s claim to being Intelligent.

Lenchiang County, commonly known as the Matsu Islands, is an archipelago of 5 major islands and 31 islets. Matsu is situated in the northwest of Taiwan approximately 250km from Taipei. Expanding on its traditionally service-based economy, Matsu has focused mainly on growing its tourism appeal over the last few decades, emphasizing its many cultural sites such as the Matsu Folk Culture Museum, Ching-Kuo Memorial Hall and War and Peace Memorial Park Exhibition Center as well as its natural treasures like the Matsu Island Bird Sanctuary that spans eight islands. To improve its appeal to tourists and the lives of those who call the islands home, Matsu is bringing modern comfort and conveniences to its population as well as visitors in the form of better connectivity, digital access, healthcare improvements and much more.

The Matsu Links

Over the last decade Matsu has created Internet links to transfer patient data to teaching hospitals and specialized hospitals in the Taipei area. Though it is over an hour from major Taipei hospitals by medivac helicopter, Matsu now can start general diagnosis at the county hospital and transfer the diagnostic results instantly to Taipei so that doctors there can be prepared with the patient's information and provide better care for the patient upon arrival. This service is used twice a month on average and has already saved numerous lives and improved the quality of medical care available to residents.

Promoting the "Smart Learning" Project

As a remote island community, Matsu is committed to closing the digital divide and information gap between urban and remote communities. Matsu's "Smart Learning" project helps them do this by focusing on resources and training for students. There are 133 free public Wi-Fi hotspots in Matsu, covering all public libraries and middle schools. The libraries also provide free access to computers with broadband connection. To facilitate usage, the community holds semi-annual basic training courses in computer skills.

Over 6 years of the program, Matsu schools have provided one tablet PC for every student, one desktop computer on campus for elementary and junior high school, and one desktop computer for every two students in senior high schools for digital learning on campus. As part of the "Smart Learning" project, Matsu focused not only on digital access for students, but their wellbeing too - creating a happy learning culture using in-class games and activities. Matsu is cooperating with National Chi Nan University (NCNU) and the Tainan University of Technology (TUT) to create a better digital learning environment. Programming resources from NCNU are used to enhance data collection; big data analysis is then performed to understand students’ learning experiences, and teaching suggestions are provided to help instructors make decisions about whether a student needs further attention or not. TUT also designed a graphical user interface to help students focus on learning and to improve their interactive digital learning environment on campus.

Digital Access

Since its first submarine data transmission cable linking the islands to Taiwan was completed in 1999, Matsu has completed two more submarine fiber optic cables in 2012 and 2014. Matsu is committed to digital access and has 34 4G cell towers and hundreds of signal amplifiers across the islands—which are only 29.2 sq km total—providing nearly 100% cell coverage. Household access to wired broadband is 95%, compared to a national average of 62%. Matsu's next broadband infrastructure project is to upgrade the free Wi-FI system to 100MB/s downstream in densely populated areas and commercial districts and to add Wi-Fi hotspots to the inter-island ferries for all visitors. A task force has been set up to build a solid foundation for the upcoming 5G system to make sure that Matsu keeps pace with the next generation of digital connection.

The Low-Carbon and Sustainable Island Program

Matsu is creating an energy-efficient, low-carbon community while making sure to maintain its status as an attractive eco-tourism destination. As part of the low-carbon and sustainable island program, Matsu is educating and supporting residents in the installation of efficient shower heads, toilets and other water appliances that can conserve water. Additionally, to better conserve electricity, the authorities are encouraging households to replace light fixtures, bulbs and home appliances with models that bear the Green Mark, and to turn lights and appliances off when not in use. At the same time, they are educating the people to reduce food wastes and recycle household garbage. Public buildings that were replaced since 2010 all meet green building requirements for environmentally responsible practices and resource efficiency.

Matsu has replaced street lamps with energy-saving fixtures and has begun teaching community environmental education programs that focus on carbon-reduction concepts. Matsu’s public recycling system is ranked first among Taiwan’s waste-recycling programs. Matsu also has the lowest rate of automobile ownership in Taiwan, which is attributed to its effective free bus system for local residents. Matsu has 200 electric scooters available for rental to reduce pollution and traffic congestion as well.

Famous for its mussels, a stop at the Mussel-tasting Festival is an essential part of any summer tour of Matsu. Matsu has pioneered the usage of new ocean-farming technology to build a sustainable mussel farming industry. Marine research shows that mussels are filter-feeders that eat tiny organisms from the sea water, which gradually cleans the water. The four local mussel farms producing up to 300 kilograms of mussels per day not only make Matsu's signature food sustainable but also make nearby ocean waters cleaner at the same time.

Eco-Tourism

The number of domestic and foreign tourists to Matsu has increased from 144,500 in 2015 when Matsu initiated the Matsu Eco-tourism Travel Plan to over 200,000. Matsu has reduced the price of its buses to $1.50 USD and has added real-time bus schedules via GPS tracking and comprehensive electronic signage at all bus stops. Visitors have access to the same real-time public transit information on the web, accessible via iMatsu free Wi-Fi hotspots available at many bus stations and all ferry ports. Matsu has also set up an array of weather sensors to make up-to-date air quality, temperature, wind direction, etc. available to visitors. Due to demand for tour guides outpacing the number of trained tour guides, Matsu has begun encouraging students to participate in junior guide short-term training tours. Matsu has also prepared an extensive recorded self-guided tour system available to backpackers at the Nangan Airport or any Matsu visitor center.

Green spaces in Matsu offer residents and visitors great opportunities to enjoy outdoor activities such as hiking, backpacking and camping. Surveys show that Matsu has approximately 24 square meters of park and green-belt space per person, ranking the islands number 1 in Taiwan. Matsu Geopark is part of Taiwan’s geopark network. Eighty-six percent of the islands’ area is covered by trees, and they are full of geological features, historic military tunnels, ocean landscapes, and traditional stone houses. Visitors can walk around one of the islands within a single day. Matsu has taken the steps to protect its natural beauty for today’s residents, tourists and future generations while making the islands an ever-more-efficient and pleasant place to call home.

Population: 12,687

Website: www.matsu.gov.tw

Smart21 2020