On November 26, the Ho Chi Minh (HCM) City People's
Committee held a conference to announce
(link in Vietnamese) plans for building
HCM City into a Smart City. The first phase will run from 2017-2020.
HCM City is the largest city in Vietnam by population, with an estimated population of more than 10 million.
Through the Smart City Project, technology will be leveraged
to help the City deal with problems such as rapid population growth and inadequate
healthcare, education and transport services. The initiatives under the Project
are expected to help improve public administration and enhance its capability
to forecast and make long-term plans.
The project also aims to ensure sustainable economic growth,
take the City towards a digital, knowledge-based economy and attract investments.
State media outlet, Việt Nam News reported
Trần Vĩnh Tuyến, deputy chairman of the city People’s Committee and head of the
smart city management board as saying, “The smart city aims to create a
comfortable, positive, healthy and safe living environment with convenient
public transportation, good healthcare, less crime and clean water and
environment.” Workers will have access to necessary infrastructure to ensure
their international competitiveness, such as broadband Internet, low-cost green
energy, opportunities to foster their education, knowledge and skills, as well
as reasonably-priced living and working space.
Public oversight will be improved through better
transparency and improved citizen participation and feedback.
Implementation plans
During the first phase from 2017-2020, there will be a focus
on cloud computing infrastructure, big data analysis, building a shared data
warehouse, construction of redundant data centres and developing an open data
ecosystem for the city.
Intelligent control centres (IOCs) with civic service
platforms and information security monitoring centres will be built. On
November 20, Vietnamnet
Bridge reported that the City has entered into an agreement with military-controlled
telecom company, Viettel, to build an operation centre for controlling and monitoring
activities in the city through data collection and analysis. The centre will
include many sub-centres such as a surveillance camera control centre to
monitor streets for crime and traffic violations, an emergency call centre for
fire and rescue services, an information security operations centre, a public
administration centre and an information management centre for the media.
The City also aims to build a centre for study and
simulation of forecasts to support the formulation of the City's socio-economic
development strategy.
Furthermore, in this first phase, there are plans to
implement smart solutions to bring immediate practical benefits for citizens in
areas such as health, food safety, education, traffic management, flood control,
and law and order. For instance, on November 23, the City’s Transportation
Department released
a free app to help commuters plan routes by providing timely information on
traffic conditions and current congestions. Other initiatives in the area of
transport could include interlinked electronic ticket, smart ticketing, and smart
parking.
In the subsequent phase 2, the smart solutions launched during
Phase 1 would be further expanded and their implementation synchronised.
Phase 3 (post-2025) is about the longer-term vision. Technology
platforms will continue to be strengthened to improve processing capacity,
storage, level of safety, security and intelligent solutions upgraded towards
being smarter and expanding into other areas of life.
Featured
image: Diego Delso/ CC BY-SA 3.0
