The Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) is working to promote the wide adoption of SIoT technologies and accelerate the development of smart city solutions in Hong Kong.
To this end, the Park hosted the Conference on Sensors and IoT (SIoT) Standard for Smart City (the Conference).
The IEEE P2668 Standard for IoT Maturity Index (IDex), an international indicator aimed at quantifying the performance of IoT objects, was announced.
SIoT, an essential technological element that drives smart city projects, is commonly applied in various industries: retail, transportation, construction, environmental management and healthcare, to name a few.
As one of the featured programmes of HKSTP’s Electronics Month, over 200 global stakeholders from academia and industry gathered to exchange knowledge and experience on successful SIoT applications, and discuss the emerging technologies, trends and market needs of this sector.
Moreover, the importance of implementing industrial standards to evaluate the IoT objects performance was raised.
Various SIoT technologies developed by Park companies and partners were showcased as well. Their applications included human traffic count, waste management and measure of temperature, CO2 levels and humidity.
The Head of Electronics and ICT Clusters, Smart City Platform of HKSTP stated that the Park has been taking the lead in promoting SIoT development and applications. Currently there are over 100 Park companies involved in the R&D of the related devices and solutions.
Serving as a smart campus, the Science Park provides them a real environment to pilot their technologies through our Sensor Hub initiative, which in turn accelerates the commercialisation of these solutions.
The IEEE Standards Association’s new international IDex was inaugurated. With the introduction of IDex, technology developers will be able to compare the IoT objects performance based on the IDex ranking and adopt the technologies meeting their requirement.
It is believed this will facilitate market adoption of solutions that come with IDex rankings.
The IDex was developed by the independent international engineering body, IEEE Standards Association. It defines the mechanism and specifications for evaluation, grading and performance ranking of IoT objects and sensors, ranging from devices to the entire systems.
It classifies the IoT objects into multiple levels of performance and gives an indication of the performance capabilities.
IoT and Hong Kong’s Smart City vision
With the vision to embrace innovation and technology to build a world-famed Smart Hong Kong characterised by a strong economy and high quality of living, IoT plays a major role in how Hong Kong aims to transform itself into a fully Smart City, often through 5G films.
According to the Hong Kong Smart City Blueprint, fifth generation (5G) mobile networks are the catalyst for smart city development, offering ultra-high speed and high capacity, supporting device-to-device ultra-reliable/low latency communications, and enabling massive machine-to-machine communications for better implementation of Internet of Things (IoT).
Hong Kong is getting ready to deploy more 5G services and applications in 2020.
According to an earlier report, a start-up that came out of Hong Kong’s Science Park, has in turn developed a hybrid reality platform that Hong Kong will use to manage its buildings.
The technology combines building information modelling to represent real buildings in a virtual 3D space. Users can then experiment with deploying new furniture or lighting to design the space for a specific purpose.
Where there are IoT-connected devices involved in a building, this interface can also be used to connect with those real-world assets. Hong Kong plans to require future buildings to submit digital twins for use in this system.
