IDC names Aussie and NZ initiatives as top APeJ smart city projects
IDC Asia/Pacific has named two ANZ projects in the top 19 out of 148 most outstanding smart city projects in Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) for the 2018 IDC Smart City Asia Pacific Awards (SCAPA).
The winning entries were selected across 12 functional categories with China, Taiwan and Singapore as the biggest winners claiming five, four and three awards respectively.
Australia and New Zealand each grabbed one award - New Zealand took the Smart Water category for Auckland Council's Safeswim initiative, and Australia shared Administration with China for Ipswich's 'Australia's Most Livable and Prosperous Smart City' initiative.
IDC Government Insights went through a rigorous six-phased benchmarking exercise to determine the Top Smart City projects for 2017-18. These included identifying and cataloguing the key Smart City projects in Asia/Pacific by IDC Analysts across APeJ (50%), online voting to determine public opinion (25%), and the assessment of an International Advisory Council (25%).
"Rapid urbanisation and the exponential population growth of APEJ cities are severely constraining urban ecosystems," says IDC Asia Pacific Government Insights and IDC Health Insights Public Sector head Gerald Wang.
"Coupled with increased socioeconomic pressures (e.g., ageing populations, inadequate housing options), and ageing infrastructures, many APEJ city governments and city administrators are driven to seek investments in Smart City solutions to guarantee their city's future survivability.
"Such city management solutions are expected to deliver better urban planning and operational efficiencies, enable higher-quality stakeholder engagements and closer collaborations, as well as influence widespread knowledge capital transformation with government employees, local businesses, and residents so cities can develop more sustainably."
Safeswim was developed by the Auckland Council and Watercare in collaboration with Surf Life Saving Northern Region and combines real-time data on the performance of the wastewater and stormwater networks with predictive models, to provide forecasts of water quality at 92 swimming sites around the Auckland Region.
Ipswich's approach is about "actively looking to forge innovative partnerships" and "looking for devices, applications and platforms to support the ongoing development" to make it "a sustainable City of the future.
"Even as municipalities globally are not the flattest, most agile organisations, city leaders should take the lead in rolling out viable and sustainable initiatives to transform traditional bureaucracies," Wang adds.
"They should not fall into the trap of waiting to be the last mile beneficiary of industrywide innovations. Inevitably, strategic and operational silos will not bring about an enviable future ecology of 'live, learn, work, and play'. IDC believes that cities with agile operations, constant capability building, long-term investments in innovation for relevance and competitive advantage, as well as an open and collaborative ecosystem will pave the way forward in socioeconomic growth and excellence.
