70 smart city initiatives in Hong Kong this year

Hong Kong’s Secretary for Innovation and Technology Raymond Yang announced that the Hong Kong government aims to prioritise the development of innovation and technology and the promotion of smart city construction this year. This is mentioned in his speech at the opening ceremony of the Smart City Journey Conference last January 10.

“After the release of the Hong Kong Smart City Blueprint in December, the government is conducting more than 70 smart city initiatives at full speed, covering Smart Travel, Smart Life, Smart Environment and Smart Citizen,” Yang said.

He pointed out that the blueprint outlines the development plans for the next five years, and the goal is to improve urban management, enhance the quality of life, and the competitiveness of Hong Kong, to encourage the community to solve problems related to the life of the people.

These initiatives include many infrastructure projects such as digital personal identity (eID), smart lampposts, open government data, upgrading government public cloud services, and building new big data analytics platforms.

Among the projects lined up for completion include the installation of traffic detectors to provide real-time traffic information, installing new on-street parking meters to support multiple payment systems, facilitating trials of autonomous vehicles, using remote sensing devices to monitor air pollution and cleanliness of public places, and implementing multi-functional smart lampposts pilot scheme to facilitate collection of real-time city data.

Developing Hong Kong into a smart city is a logical next step for the special administrative region as it has first-class telecommunications network with broadband speeds and penetration rates among the highest in the world. At the time the blueprint was launched, Hong Kong has a household broadband penetration rate of 92.5 per cent, mobile subscriber penetration rate of 242.5 per cent and over 20,000 free Wi-Fi hotspots.

Although Yang didn’t outline all the 70 ongoing smart city-related projects this year, he said that the OGCIO will set up the Smart Government Innovation Laboratory in April this year. — Construction+ Online