ICF Director of Operations Matthew Owen sits down with ICF Co-Founder Robert Bell to discuss three of 2018's Top7 Intelligent Communities of the Year: Chiayi City, Taiwan; Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; and Taoyuan, Taiwan.

(New York– 8 February 2018) – The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) named the world’s Top7 Intelligent Communities of 2018 today.  This is the think tank’s 16^th 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.  The announcement will take place as the culminating event at the ICF Global Summit from 4-6 June at Siemens’ Crystal Facility and other sites around London. (www.icfsummit.com)

The population of Hudson, Ohio is approximately 22,262. It is an affluent suburban community ideally located between Cleveland and Akron. Hudson is consistently thought of as the “jewel” of Northeast Ohio. Hudson has an excellent education system, historic neighborhoods, vibrant downtown shopping and dining, and a great quality of life. The City is also home to more than nine-hundred businesses, ranging from entrepreneurial endeavors to international corporations. The last 4 years have seen unprecedented commercial/industrial development from “future-facing” businesses in technology, medical/wellness, polymers, and homeland and cyber security. Hudson offers advantages to companies that want to locate in a family-friendly environment, making it the place to do business in Northeast Ohio.

At the same time there are challenges. The Hudson community had long eschewed growing its business tax base. Despite a heavy residential tax imbalance, high home prices and an aging and flat population, the focus was on affordable living. These challenges have been compounded by an upper middle-class population whose perception is ‘all is well’.  The median age of Hudson is a rapidly advancing 45.2 years with approximately 72% of residents over the age of 25 holding a bachelor’s degree or higher. Median household income is approximately $129,000. But like intelligent communities everywhere, it is a place in transition from one economy to the next. Hudson seeks to secure its future at a time when smaller communities without a distinct competitive advantage are seeing their human, economic, and cultural assets drained away by bigger places.

Velocity Broadband

In late 2015, Hudson began construction of the Velocity Broadband Network. That milestone was the end of one journey and the beginning of another. As internet access became essential to businesses, the city began hearing more and more complaints about lack of reliable, affordable connectivity. The largest companies in town could afford dedicated high-capacity service but small-to-midsize companies – the backbone of employment everywhere – could not. A survey of residents and businesses in 2015 made clear that coverage, speed, performance and reliability were a big issue. Some business people reported regularly leaving town for a café with internet access because their own service was so undependable.

The city first tried to interest ISPs in upgrading their infrastructure but the proposals from providers were inadequate and expensive. It pitched potential private-sector partners on buying capacity on an open-access network to be capitalized by the city. The response was tepid. Finally, City Council agreed to become a retail service provider. It made a US$3.3 million internal loan so that its IT department could expand the fiber network already used by government to serve the business community.

Today, Velocity Broadband offers business customers a symmetrical 500x500 Mbps service with capability up to 10 Gbps. More than 250 business customers subscribe to internet service and over 100 to voice-over-internet-protocol telephone, producing revenues that exceed operating costs since 2017. In addition to satisfying existing users, Hudson has seen direct impact on business attraction. For the previous ten years, one of the city's primary business parks had only one tenant. Since Velocity Broadband started service, the park has added seven new buildings and is close to being fully occupied.

With the success of Velocity Broadband in the business sector, Hudson was eager to expand coverage to residential areas as well. The city sought input from citizens on broadband needs and challenges through a community survey and a committee of residents. In 2019, based on survey and committee findings, Hudson changed its policy to stop differentiating between residential and business structures for coverage, expanding Velocity’s potential subscriber footprint from 600 to 1,500 potential new customers. The city will seek further opportunities for network expansion in the coming years as well.

Fire Prevention via Broadband

Hudson’s historic downtown is comprised of buildings that are more than 100 years old, many of which are physically attached or at least directly adjacent to one another. Even one building catching fire in the area could spell disaster for all of downtown, wiping out businesses, lives and history all at once. The primary way to prevent such spreading fires is quick detection, but most options, such as running wires through old brick walls and ceilings, were prohibitively expensive for local businesses. The city took advantage of its Velocity Broadband to design a brand-new solution instead.

During the first quarter of 2018, the city coordinated building inspections with the Hudson Fire Department and the Velocity Broadband vendor to check signal strength and determine appropriate locations for wireless fire detection units. These units will form a mesh network that communicates back to a central fire panel, allowing Hudson’s Fire Department to learn immediately of any fires beginning. In addition, the devices include wireless horn-strobes that will alert everyone in the general vicinity if a fire breaks out. The city has made historic Main Street a pilot site for this fire detection network with plans to expand if testing goes well.

Center for Innovation and Creativity

An educated population tends to demand much from its educational institutions. In 2010, Hudson was named as one of the 100 Best Communities for Young People by an organization called America's Promise. The award was based on work that began in the 1990s to combat drug use and drive down the dropout rate by providing additional educational and cultural opportunities.

Today, the Hudson City Schools are part of the Six District Compact, a partnership of neighboring school districts, which lets students enroll in two-year higher education programs that earn college credit or provide a pathway directly from high school into employment. Vocational courses range from automotive to cosmetology, and STEM offerings as diverse as coding and robotics lead to the awarding of Microsoft and Cisco certifications. A 1-to-1 Chromebook program has equipped all students in grades 3-12 with a free laptop, and also paid for a professional Technology Coordinator to manage the project. Based on the Chromebook program’s success, the city will be providing students in grades 6-8 with 6th-generation iPads to replace their Chromebooks, giving them access to a wider variety of productivity and learning apps and tools. The same funding includes support and incentives for teachers to become certified as Google Educators. This mix of technology, training and train-the-trainer programs is a fundamental building block of the knowledge workforce. In 2016, a private secondary school, Western Reserve Academy, opened the Center of Technology, Innovation and Creativity with funding from a local foundation. In the 6,000-square-foot (557 m2) collaborative makerspace, students pursue their own projects and partner with local businesses to design, engineer and create products, beginning with banners and T-shirts and advancing to custom-branded gift items. The Center expected to offset 100% of its operating costs through such projects by the end of 2017.

Innovation does not, however, stop with the Academy's students. The Center has invited public schools to explore the facility and hosted a Digital Fabrication Camp for younger students. A 2017 gift to the school made it possible for students from rural, disadvantaged Ohio towns to spend three weeks of learning and exploration at the Center and to board at the Academy.

Engaging the Community

Hudson's economic development leadership discovered in 2017 that a highly valuable asset was hiding in plain sight. The city is home to nearly 80 Chairs, CEOs and founders of major corporations, universities and nonprofits in the region. To put that talent to work, the city and Hudson Community Foundation established the Business Leader Advisory Board, which meets biannually to prioritize opportunities arising from Velocity Broadband and other developments, and to act throughout the year as advocates for the city beyond its borders. Still in the early stage at the time of this report, the Board provides to Hudson the kind of expertise, insight and leadership access normally available only in a major city.

Another program, Leadership Hudson, introduces its citizen participants to local leaders in government, business and the community, and offers training in leadership. In addition to valuable networking and leadership development, the program offers each class the chance to develop a unique project to benefit the community. In 2014, the Leadership Hudson class partnered with the city-owned electric utility to install a Solar Education Center, complete with solar panels, at the Barlow Community Center. The class raised money for the project from local foundations, businesses and social organizations, as well as a crowdfunding effort that contributed 10% of the total raised. The money went to build a system with 55 roof-mounted and 10 ground-level solar panels, which now provide half the building's electricity and will save the city $100,000 in the next 25 years while reducing carbon emissions by 40 tons per year. Next on the agenda of the Solar Education Center is engagement with local schools to use data generated by the solar installation in STEM programs and in the Green Cup Energy Challenge, a national competition that engages more than 300 schools each year.

For those residents still left out of the loop, the city created the Hudson Commons project in 2019. The project aims to provide information and updates to citizens regardless of their media consumption habits, a formidable task in the digital age. The Hudson Commons project includes a wide variety of communication avenues, from monthly 3-4 page newsletters delivered by mail to bi-weekly “Hudson Headlines” short videos streamed online and posts on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. The city is also considering creating a new version of Hudson Community Television available through new services such as online streaming, rather than traditional television.

Getting Out of the Way of Progress

City government is making its own contribution to progress by identifying processes that stand in the way of economic growth. The city manager introduced a Continuous Improvement initiative in 2016, and one of its first projects involved the permitting process for residential, commercial and industry construction. It was locally famous for its length and cumbersome procedures: a typical residential application took 11.5 days to process and involved 45 separate steps.

The Continuous Improvement team conducted a week of exhaustive interviews with employees and analyzed the steps in the workflow. At the end of the review, the team proposed to junk the existing software system in favor of a user-friendly online interface that could accept credit card transactions and would drastically reduce the number of steps. As just one example, residents wanting to add a window or fence to their property typically waited one week for approval, a process that involved a formal review board. The new system let residents apply for and receive approval in hours without ever leaving home. That residential application requiring 11.5 days and 45 steps was reduced to 2.5 days and 13 steps, and similar gains were made on commercial and industrial applications.

The leaders of Hudson understand the privileges that come with its position as a home for well-educated, well-paid residents working at companies throughout the region. Hudson's citizens already tend to be on the winning side of the transition to a digitally-powered economy – but the city is not one to take its current success for granted. Ambitious programs in broadband, education, economic and community development provide a pathway to a stronger economy and more engaged society for all Hudsonians.

Population: 22,389

Website: www.hudson.oh.us

Smart21 2018 | 2019 | 2020

Top7 2019 | 2020

Community Contacts

In the far northern nations of the world, people tend to cluster southward. Espoo, Finland's second largest city, lies on the border of its biggest city and national capital, Helsinki. Both stand on Finland’s southern coast, directly across the Gulf of Finland from Tallinn, a frequent Top7 Intelligent Community and the capital of Estonia.

In 1950, Espoo was a regional municipality of 22,000, which drew its name from the Swedish words for the aspen tree and for river. Today, Espoo is still a place on a river bordered by aspen, and about 8 percent of its population still speaks Swedish as its first language.

Sixty-five years later, however, it is an industrial city of 270,000. It retains its dispersed, regional nature, however, being made of up of seven population hubs arrayed along the border with Helsinki, where many of its citizens work.

Next-Generation Challenges

In 2010, Finland’s Parliament made history by declaring that access to 1 Mbps broadband is a legal right. Today, Finland ranks second in the world for mobile broadband adoption, according to the OECD. It is also one of the leading countries in Europe for ultra-broadband adoption, with more than 50% of households having access to a fixed connection of 100 Mbps.

In such an advanced broadband economy, it is natural that the Intelligent Community of Espoo would take a next-generation approach to improving broadband access and adoption. With the explosive growth of mobile data, driven largely by video, the city sees a serious risk of capacity bottlenecks threatening city digital services and throttling the future online experience of residents. Its answer is LuxTurrim 5G, a three-year pilot project that engages Espoo companies and research institutions in evaluating smart light poles as transmitters for 5G, the emerging mobile standard that promises hundreds of megabits per second of service. The light poles will include miniaturized 5G antennas and base stations, sensors for smart city systems and digitally controlled LED lighting. Launched in the spring of 2017, the project aims to create a proof-of-concept for the technology integration and then to start building an export business for the city’s partner companies.

Transforming Education

Finland also has an educational performance that is the envy of the world. For most of the 21st Century, its 15-year olds have been among the very top performers in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an ongoing study administered every three years that tests the reading, math and science literacy. Eighty-four percent of Finnish 25-64 year olds have at least an upper secondary education, compared with 75% for the OECD, and 39% hold a higher education degree, compared with 32% for the OECD.

As with broadband, so with education. For students at secondary school level, Espoo is working with a local university and private-sector companies on a completely new model for education called School as a Service (SaaS). A school is traditionally defined as a building. The emerging SaaS model redefines school as a network of resources to support learning. In a process designed by school staff and students, teachers change their focus from imparting knowledge to helping students identify the best way for themselves to learn. They have access not only to their own facilities but to university instructors, classrooms, laboratories and science showcases.

In the first year, students have actively grasped the opportunity to attend university courses. The high school has attracted 150% more applicants than in the previous year, and the new model is reducing costs by 25% through better use of space. A second high school is adopting the SaaS model in 2018, and it will be applied in Shanghai, China as well through a partnership with Tongji University.

To help job-seekers with little education, the Employment Concert Sello project trains the unemployed in job-specific skills in partnership with large shopping centers in Espoo and the companies located there. Employers agree to offer trial places to unemployed residents. Trainers in the program find job seekers who are best suited to each company, train them in applying for jobs and the requirements of work. Since the program’s start in 2015, more than 100 companies have agreed to offer trial positions to job seekers, and over 130 job seekers have gained employment and found access to education.

Educational Innovation for Profit

In Espoo, education is not just a means of equipping the next generation with inquiring minds and employable skills. It is also an economic development program. In 2016, Espoo launched a collaborative project called KYKY Accelerated Co-Creation. It turns schools into living labs that support students’ learning and growth while giving educational technology companies a platform to develop products and services for learning. It recognizes that today’s edtech companies lack real understanding of today’s school life, pedagogy and curriculum, and is creating a new operating model to overcome the challenge.

There are risks in letting profit-minded businesses set the terms of education. The KYKY operating model sets clear steps for schools and companies to co-create new products and services that support learning and digital skills. Co-creation activities are user-driven, participatory and empowering, with school and company deciding together on structure, methods and goals. So far, schools participating in the program have seen an increase in the digital skills of students and teachers, as well as their understanding of entrepreneurship as they rub shoulders with edtech company employees. A total of 40 schools with 33,000 participants took part in the program by the end of the spring term in 2017, and the program claims credit for guiding five education startups to international markets – all of them using the “Co-Created with the City of Espoo” brand in their marketing.

Sustainable at the Core

The term “industrial city” usually describes a place where the needs of industry outweighs the needs of citizens for air they can breathe, water they can drink and a safe place to raise their children. Not so in Espoo. An international benchmark has named Espoo the most sustainable city in Europe. The city gives credit to an ongoing partnership among city government, residents, businesses, universities and other stakeholders. From 2013 to 2016, more than 100,000 people participated in sustainability events and city government launched 17 new sustainability projects in collaboration with partners and citizens.

One of the most remarkable things about Espoo is its recognition that, despite being Finland’s second largest city, it is a small player in a global economy. Espoo is a partner in the Six City Strategy, a cooperative policy uniting the six largest cities in Finland to tackle urban challenges. It focuses on open innovation, open data and open participation. The aim is to facilitate the development of smart city solutions by companies and to create an open market among the cities and companies that provides a nationally significant platform for innovation. Cities offer data while identifying their needs to better serve constitutions. Companies bring their tech expertise, market knowledge and corporate objectives to the partnership. Together, they make the opening up of data a natural part of city operation, while driving the creation of commercially viable applications and businesses. From 2014 to 2017, the municipal and corporate partners have launched 26 projects with a budget of 45 million euros, with an additional 55 million euros forecast through 2020.

The cycles of the year are strong in Espoo. In mid-winter, daylight lasts only seven hours, while in midsummer, the sun is a presence in the sky for all but three hours out of twenty-four. Perhaps it is this which gives the city such an appreciation of the forces beyond its control – in particular the technology changes rippling the world’s economy and challenging every community to adapt. With 275,000 people, Espoo may be Finland’s second biggest city but its adaptability to the future is second to none.

Population: 275,000

Website: www.espoo.fi

Intelligent Community of the Year 2018

Smart21 2018

Top7 2018

The capital of the state of South Australia, Adelaide also enjoys, according to The Economist, the distinction of being among the most liveable cities in the world. It is the center of a metro area of 1.3 million that contains 75% of the state’s population. That high liveability factor is the result of its comfortable Mediterranean climate and coastal location, a legacy of planning that dates back to its founding in the 19th Century, and a diverse and well-educated population, of which 30% come from overseas and more than 34,000 are international students.

The community is home to the University of Adelaide, University of South Australia, Flinders University and campuses of Carnegie Mellon and University College London. The educational connection has given birth to multiple research and development parks, including the Waite Research Precinct, Technology Park, Science Park and the Research Park at Thebarton.

Growing the IT Economy

Despite its dominance of the state’s population, Adelaide’s housing is relatively cheap – about half the average price of Sydney and two-thirds that of Melbourne. That helps support the growth of an economy that is currently and comfortably driven by government spending. The largest employment sector is health care and social assistance at 13%, followed by retail at 12%. Metro Adelaide is also home to a significant percentage of Australia’s defense industry and a major Royal Australian Air Force base.

Adelaide’s Intelligent Community programs, however, focus on building a more innovative economy. It has partnered with a company called TPG to install Ten Gigabit Adelaide, a fiber-optic network offering 10 Gbps symmetrical capacity to businesses. The network was launched in March 2018 with the goal of running fiber down every street of the central business district and other business centers. By July 2019, it had connected more than 400 buildings and 200 businesses and was on target to reach 1,000 by mid-2020. City government estimates that Ten Gigabit Adelaide will deliver between A$16m and A$76m in economic benefit, lead to the creation of 2,500 new jobs in six years, and have a major positive impact on business attraction, retention and consumer spending. It will also provide the fundamental infrastructure needed to deliver future smart city projects for better traffic management, smart lighting and security video.

Guiding Growth

The city has also retained its first Entrepreneur in Residence to guide aspiring entrepreneurs, company founders and business leaders in growing investment-ready start-ups. Kirk Drage returned to Adelaide after a decade working for Microsoft as Head of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. His multi-country Asian team recruited more than 8,000 startups during his tenure. He works from the Smart City Studio, founded in 2015 in partnership with Cisco, which declared Adelaide one of its Lighthouse Cities that same year.

A different kind of guidance is provided by the Digital Hub Training Program, which encourages lifelong learning through community computer literacy training. The Hub delivered 1,392 programs in its most recent year, which brought training on computers, tablets, smartphones, virtual reality and robotics to over 4,000 residents. More than 200 organizations also sent their employees to workshops on selling online, using social media for growth, and understanding emerging technologies. As part of the Digital Hub Training Program, the city also launched its Tech Talk series in partnership with Adelaide University’s Australian Institute for Machine Learning program in February 2019. The first series featured insights from many distinguished speakers from academic and government posts throughout the country.

Supporting What Works

The emphasis on preparing for a digital economy has not diverted Adelaide from investing in the things that make it a great community today. Study Adelaide is a program that markets the city as a destination for international students. (Wonderful weather and great beaches probably help.) It targets 43 cities in 11 countries and provides a joined-up approach to attract students, provide support for them once they arrive and build connections with local employers as they prepare to leave school. The success of the program is easily measured: students from overseas currently contribute about A$1.8 billion in economic value to the city.

With quality of life such an important driver, it is no wonder that Adelaide has signed on to the Paris Climate Accord of Mayors. Its Carbon Neutral Strategy aims to have the city become the first in the world to be certified as producing zero net carbon emissions by 2020. Adelaide already slashed its carbon emissions 60% from 1994 to 2010, when a new energy management plan began to transform how the city obtained its energy. City Council reduced its energy consumption by 15% through 2015 and achieved savings of A$800,000 in the process. It is now piloting a smart LED lighting program that is expected to reduce energy consumption by a further 10% and produce an average monthly savings of 1.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Adelaide also developed a Sustainability Incentives Scheme in 2015 to provides financial rebates to the community to support adoption of sustainable technologies and actions that improve environmental performance and support growth in the low carbon economy. Since its inception, the program has provided over $1 million in rebates to citizens and companies in the community.

Nature, location and history have been kind to Adelaide, which is Australia’s oldest municipal authority. Like all cities, it is faced with an increasingly unpredictable future, from climate change to disruptive innovation, and Adelaide is equipping itself with the infrastructure and programs needed to turn challenge into social, economic and cultural success.

Population: 1,360,000

Website: www.cityofadelaide.com.au

Smart21 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021

Top7 2020

Москва вошла в топ-7 самых умных городов мира по версии Intelligent Community Forum (Форум интеллектуально сообщества). ICF — американская некоммерческая организация, которая «изучает экономическое и социальное развитие мировых сообществ XXI века». Главной задачей форума стал поиск и выявление городов, в которых жизнь граждан, благодаря уровню развития технологий, оказывается более благоприятной и комфортной. В 2002 году основатели ICF получили грант от правительства Канады, произвели исследование шести городов, стараясь понять, какие технологии позволяют одним городам развиваться лучше, чем другим, и как эти факторы можно использовать для улучшения жизни граждан. В том же году была учреждена премия Intelligent Community of the Year — «Самый умный город мира».

Moscow joined the top 7 most intelligent cities in the world version of Intelligent Community Forum (Forum intellectual community). The ICF - US non-profit organization , which "examines the economic and social development of the world community XXI century". The main objective of the forum was the search and identification of cities, in which the lives of citizens, thanks to the level of technology development, is more supportive and comfortable. In 2002 the founders of the ICF have received a grant from the Government of Canada, made a study of six cities, trying to understand which technologies allow one city to develop better than others, and how these factors can be used to improve the lives of citizens. In that same year the award Intelligent Community of was established by the Year «The most intelligent city in the world." -

One of the founders of an organization that’s considering Grey County as the top intelligent community in the world is touring the county this week.

Louis Zacharilla is with the Intelligent Community Forum based in New York City.

Grey County is on the short list of seven communities in the world the organization considers to be using technology to enhance economic development and quality of life.

I have to explain the PLUS! in the title right away. As you can tell from the title this blog is intended to talk about the TOP7 announcement in Taipei on February 9, but so much more went on that week in Taiwan that needs to be discussed here. For instance, ICF Canada took a business delegation to Taiwan; ICF Taiwan was announced on February 9 at a special ICF-related conference focusing on the Internet of Cities; and ICF-related delegations from around the world attended the conference and TOP7 announcement from the Netherlands, Vietnam, Estonia and Hong Kong. And Lou Zacharilla and I came from ICF, the global headquarters of the ICF Think Tank in New York to officially announce the 2017 TOP7 at an event associated with Taiwan’s Lantern Festival. It was an incredible week. Where to start?

If you have ever eaten a bowl of instant noodles, you owe a debt to Momofuku Ando, founder of Nissin Foods and inventor of this staple of Asian fast food, who was born and raised in Tainan City. This city of 1.9 million was the historic capital of Taiwan and the cultural heritage of centuries remains one of Tainan’s most important assets that drives a thriving tourist industry.

Tainan today, however, is about much more than the past. It is home to multiple science and technology parks including the Southern Taiwan Science Park, Tainan Technology Park and Shugu LCD Park. The tenant rolls are dominated by optoelectronics, integrated circuits, green energy and biotech companies, which together with more traditional manufacturing generate more than half of the city’s economic activity.

Partnering for Progress

Tainan’s government supports industry in multiple ways. Its Small Business Innovation Research program promotes and subsidizes R&D by smaller companies and incentivizes universities and research institutions to partner with them on commercialization. It has adopted a national program called Dual System Training, a carefully structured co-op employment and apprenticeship system. It accepts high school graduates and guides them through four years of work-study with Tainan employers that generally leaves them debt-free and employed upon graduation. Tainan entered the program in 2012 and by 2016, it had involved 6 universities and 37 companies, and admitted 250 students. Retention rates at partner companies hover around 80%.

Government also invests in broadband as a promoter of quality of life for employers and citizens. Adoption of fixed broadband already exceeds 95%, leaving little room for improvement. The government’s focus instead is on hotspot WiFi availability and applications that can transform living and working in the city. Beginning in 2016, Tainan City created a series of free WiFi hotspots based on its already 4G-equipped traffic light control boxes at intersections. As of August 2017, traffic lights at 1,600 intersections, 904 stop station smart signs, and 400 buses in Tainan now provide free 4G WiFi. The city also installed free WiFi in 35 smart parking lots.

To make use of Tainan’s WiFi availability, the city is in the process of building a set of applications for a Beacon city. In 2016, it published a number of apps, including “Alley X Tainan,” Guide to Historical Sites in Tainan” and “VZ TAIWAN Smart Tourism,” which provide information on nearby foods and shops, interesting stories about the area and transportation information at scenic spots, historical sites and restaurants and shops around the city. Tainan has installed nearly 1,000 Beacon devices at its smart bus stations to provide arrival time information, traffic reports, information on nearby tourist destinations and other services. As of August 2017, Tainan City has roughly 11,000 beacons with a goal of 20,000 installed in the coming years.

Cultivating Youth Innovation

The Tainan city government has set up a number of maker bases for the city’s youth in old housing developments and other unused spaces. The bases—Tainan Maker Base for Youth-BIG O2, PunPlace and Southern Maker Base—all include Hackerspace, Makerspace, TechShop, FabLab and other maker spindles. Tainan’s maker bases provide youth entrepreneurs with software and hardware access, including 3D printing, laster cutting, metal casting machines and AR and VR support in spaces with lower rents that clients can more easily afford.

To further support young innovators, Chang Jung Christian University and Kun Shan University have introduced coaching courses in digital entrepreneurship and marketing. The courses, taught by professional teachers, set up digital cooperation platforms as part of the class, providing students with a platform to increase product visibility and access venture capital.

Mobile Networking Project

Since 2009, the Tainan city government has provided free digital skills classes to middle-aged and senior citizens to help them make use of the city’s newer digital services. Topics include basic smartphone usage and applications, e-commerce, smartphone usage for travel, and smartphone usage for scheduling, including medical appointments, hotel booking and ticket purchases. The classes are taught in a “mobile classroom” environment in which teachers drive to the students, bringing all their class materials and equipment along, so that less mobile residents can still take part. In 2015, 3,428 residents attended at least one class, with the 43% of students being citizens between the ages of 60 and 70.

The Mobile Networking Project has developed a partnership with the Department of Health to improve quality of life and medical care for Tainan’s senior citizens. By offering classes on smartphone usage, the project gives residents easier access to the wealth of medical information available on the Internet and has also streamlined the appointment booking system for those seeking medical aid.

Tainan City has also focused on closing the digital divide in rural areas. In 2006, the city government set up its first Digital Opportunity Center in a rural area. As of 2016, Tainan has 12 such Digital Opportunity Centers. The centers provide lessons in the use of digital technologies and long-distance health teaching, in cooperation with Chi Mei Hospital. DOCs also teach network marketing, helping on rural businesses like small-scale farmers and merchants in remote areas to market their goods more widely and effectively.

Air Quality Monitoring and Transparency

Tainan launched the Bright & Clear Skies program in 2014 to improve the quality of air by reducing particle pollution in the city. Particle pollution is created by a wide variety of daily activities, including factory production, driving vehicles, construction work, road dust, and many other sources. The program targets eight major source of pollution, including enforcing more rigorous vehicle inspections to prevent gas emission violations, advising local businesses on dust-capturing equipment, and encouraging residents to drive less and use public transit. Road dust is the largest source of particle pollution in Tainan. Dust particles on the roads are thrown up into the air by each vehicle that passes along a paved surface. In addition to encouraging citizens to use more public transit, Tainan has organized road-washing trucks throughout the city to minimize dust on major roads.

To ensure that air quality continues to improve, the Tainan government will be installing 240 air quality detection AirBoxes, donated by Edimax, throughout the city. The AirBoxes detect humidity, temperature, and multiple pollution figures, including PM2.5 levels. Edimax plans to collaborate with the Academia Sinica and Taian City to analyze data collected by the AirBoxes, and the city will set up a visual representation of the findings for general audiences. All citizens of Tainan will soon be able to access the visual representation and the indexed data online at airbox.tainan.tw or through an app on their smartphones.

Solar Development

Tainan City is an ideal location for solar power and technology development, as its average sunshine per year is roughly 25% above the national average at 2000h. The city also has a flourishing green energy industry, featuring 161 green energy enterprises, 61 of which are solar-power-supply industries. Tainan’s Solar City Initiative began in 2011 to organize these resources into one central plan that includes implementing solar rooftops, solar public houses, solar living communities and agricultural greenhouses. The city is currently planning to establish a solar PV system on salt industry land, which is useless for cultivation, as well as restored landfill sites in the area. The plan aims to have this solar infrastructure complete in two years’ time. Tainan also launched a solar city service network in 2016 to provide planning subsidies, manufacturer financing, benefit calculations and other services to businesses and investors.

In an ever-changing world of new technologies and the challenges that come with them, Tainan has focused first and foremost on its people, providing education, easy avenues for participation and a better standard of living to lead the city as a whole into a brighter future.

Population: 1,886,267

Website: https://www.tainan.gov.tw/en/

Smart21 2017 | 2018 | 2019

Top7 2018

10 February 2017

Ipswich has been recognised as a global leader in the application of digital innovation to advance community prosperity and liveability after being named among the world’s Top 7 Intelligent Communities at a conference in Taiwan.

Mayor Paul Pisasale said the prestigious accolade was recognition of Ipswich’s ability to think global and act local, embrace digital technology and adapt to change.

“Ipswich is once again recognised as one of the Top 7 Intelligent Communities of the world as assessed by the New York based smart cities think tank, the Intelligent Communities Forum (ICF),” Cr Pisasale said.