The Office of the Government Chief Information Officer invites members of the public to give views on the recommendations made in the report of the consultancy study on a smart city blueprint for Hong Kong on its dedicated smart city portal (http://www.smartcity.gov.hk) from August 1 to September 30 2017.
Commissioned by the Government, the consultant studied the formulation of the overall development framework of the Hong Kong Smart City Blueprint, and submitted the report to the Government in late June. The full report and the executive summary have been uploaded to the dedicated portal mentioned above. According to the executive summary, nine smart city strategic actions may be adopted for guiding the journey for Hong Kong towards a smart city based on Hong Kong’s current capabilities, city challenges, and aspirations for the future. These include:
1. Invigorating the ecosystem for innovation to support the development, commercialisation, scaling up and export of smart solutions;
2. Engaging the public and business and co-creating smart solutions with stakeholders to better meet the needs and fulfil the aspirations of the people;
3. Cultivating a culture of embracing changes and collaboration for smart city development;
4. Integrating with city planning;
5. Establishing a sound digital framework to support further improvement to the operations of urban infrastructures and provision of services;
6. Providing support to reduce the digital divide and ensure inclusiveness of Smart City development;
7. Equipping students and workforce with the knowledge and skills to seize opportunities in a Smart City;
8. Developing an innovative strategy for procuring smart solutions; and
9. Improving preparedness, prevention, and mitigation of adverse events.
Recommendations of the report cover six areas, namely “Smart Mobility”, “Smart Living”, “Smart Environment”, “Smart People”, “Smart Government” and “Smart Economy”.
Under the Smart Mobility initiatives, some of the potential plans include:
- Developing strategic road map for Intelligent Transport Systems (“ITS”) to map out the short-term and long-term goals of smart mobility, with the development of various ITS initiatives interacting with each other using real-time city wide traffic data.
- Enhancing user experience at smart public transport interchange or major bus stops to provide functions and features such as integration of sensors to demonstrate multi-functionalities (e.g. traffic detection and air quality), provision of free Wi-Fi and multi-purpose touch screen.
- Facilitating informed journey planning through all-in-one transport mobile application (“HKeMobility”) by Transport Department.
Some of the projects identified under Smart Living initiatives were:
- Providing more options of digital payment.
- Providing a secured means for individual identification and access to digital profile/persona.
- Enhancing the living and health environment for the community, through the use of gerontechnology, teleconsultation and remote health monitoring, to help the elderly live in the community and institutions comfortably, healthily and independently while remaining closely connected to the community and their families.
For Smart Environment initiatives, some of the projects identified in the executive summary include:
- Promoting green and intelligent buildings in construction and maintenance.
- Advancing the electrical grid with smart technology for better energy management by interconnecting various sensors, meters and appliances to allow remote monitoring of energy usage, and for users to manage their own energy demand and shift peak hours of energy usage.
- Exploiting the value of waste through improving Hong Kong’s waste management practices to maximise landfill diversion and increase recycling, and increasing efficiency in the overall waste management processes.
Projects identified under the theme of Smart People include:
- Enhancing Hong Kong’s capability in data science through the school curricula and other education and training programmes.
- Providing convenient access to services through a city One-Stop Shop to allow simple and easy access to multiple public services.
In terms of Smart Government initatives, some of the identified projects are:
- Preparing for the deployment of 5G which supports a broad array of innovative services and applications characterised by high speed mobile transmission, high speed mobility, extreme low-latency, real time communications and massive IoT connections.
- Enabling a more efficient building life cycle through the use of Building Information Modelling (“BIM”) which can be leveraged as a technology tool in the construction industry, allowing those involved in various processes in a buildings’ life cycle to design, build and operate buildings with the aid of a virtual environment, which helps minimise changes and reduce project risks. Examples of applications include clash detection, cost estimation, fabrication and shop drawings, asset and facilities management, and construction sequencing planning.
Lastly, under the Smart Economy initiatives, projects include:
- Complementing the existing strengths of Hong Kong’s financial sector with FinTech development.
- Revitalising Hong Kong’s manufacturing with re-industrialisation. Specifically, emerging technologies such as robotics, IoT, drones, 3D printing, AI and analytics, can be used to attract investment in high value-added manufacturing.
Members of the public are invited to submit, through the dedicated portal, views on the recommendations of the report. Views may also be sent by email to info@smartcity.gov.hk.
The Government will take into consideration views collected in order to formulate a smart city blueprint for Hong Kong.
The full report and the executive summary for the development of the Smart City blueprint can be found here.
