Taiwan should develop smart cities with a view to creating a "smart life" for its residents, Premier Mao Chi-kuo said today at the 2015 Smart City Summit and Expo staged in Taipei.
"Aside from resolving global urbanization problems and promoting sustainable development, intelligent applications can minimize the waste of resources while maximizing energy and effectiveness."
The premier named two primary reasons for developing smart cities: to uncover new growth opportunities for Taiwan's information and communications technologies, and to tap into the global market for smart living technologies.
"While cities provide people with the basic amenities of life, smart technologies can boost agriculture, save energy, and bring improvements to homes, businesses and the environment."
More than just a concept, a smart city is the best example of practical living, Mao continued. Taiwan already is equipped with such infrastructure as intelligent transportation, smart logistics, smart governance, intelligent health care, intelligent communities and smart buildings.
A smart city is an interconnected web of intelligent information technologies including mobile communication networks, the Internet, social networks, the Internet of Things, as well as cloud applications such as open data and big data. With smart applications, big data is not only big data but a means to greater interoperability among networks, people and machines, he added.
Smart cities can also inspire social innovations, Mao said. The government can use open data and big data to enable administrative innovations or create innovative procedures that integrate systems across agencies. This type of technology can also be used to evaluate and adjust public policies, bringing social innovations to life, production and the environment.
Premier Mao also stressed that Taiwan's industries must be creative and rooted in the global innovation-driven economy, turning smart life applications into ingenuity, creativity and new businesses.
"I hope Taiwan can do more than simply manufacture technologies for smart cities. We must put human compassion back into focus and develop a lifestyle that is unique to Taiwan. As Taiwan becomes a major base for smart living, it will attract creative people from around the world and brand itself as a pioneer of smart living."
In closing, Premier Mao said another goal for developing smart living applications is to inspire innovative industries spanning different generations. To achieve that vision, central and local governments must cooperate with industries and researchers to form alliances that can take Taiwan's smart products and services to the global market. Local governments can sponsor local and overseas trade shows showcasing smart living as the theme of the innovation-driven economy, while the public and private sectors can establish innovation and entrepreneurial platforms to develop exportable supply chains.