Creation of Smart City

The Korean government is accelerating the creation of “smart city,” which is the fruit of information and communication technology (ICT) convergence industry.
The Korean government is accelerating the creation of “smart city,” which is the fruit of information and communication technology (ICT) convergence industry.

 

The Presidential Committee on the Fourth Industrial Revolution of Korea is accelerating the creation of “smart city,” which is the fruit of information and communication technology (ICT) convergence industry. 

The committee has decided to establish a special sub-committee for the smart city and mobile health care sectors as part of its select and concentration strategy. It is planning to address various social problems in cities based on wired and wireless communication networks and nationwide Internet of Things (IoT) networks, which are the greatest strengths of South Korea, and create a high tech city by converging artificial intelligence (AI) and big data.

According to the Ministry of Science, Future Planning and ICT and relevant industry sources on November 7, the Presidential Committee on the Fourth Industrial Revolution will propose “basic direction of the fourth industrial revolution policy” as early as the end of this month. The committee will also set up a special sub-committee for smart cities, discuss the direction of future projects and bring them before the committee next month. 

An official from the Presidential Committee on the Fourth Industrial Revolution said, “At the recent Presidential office’s chief and advisor meeting chaired by President Moon Jae-in, the Presidential Committee on the Fourth Industrial Revolution announced its plans to create a special sub-committee for smart cities and promote it as national pilot projects. The bottom line is that public and private sectors will work together to come up with big data-based city operation system.” 

Currently, many countries around the world are raising public policy efficiency using unidentifiable personal information based big data. The Singaporean government plans to establish smart city infrastructure, control traffic flow by collecting and analyzing public transport information in real time through its Government Technology Agency (GovTech) as well as to come up with city plans based on three-dimensional geographic information. Big data, which have been used to market e-commerce, finance and manufacturing sectors so far, are also becoming the policy tool to construct advanced city infrastructure and transportation systems.

For instance, in South Korea, online to offline (O2O) transit platforms such as SK Telecom’s mobile navigation app T Map and Kakao Mobility’s Kakao Taxi and Kakao Driver, can be used. 

The government also considers the utilization of big data as the key task for smart cities. South Korea has been strengthening the competitiveness of individual elementary technologies, including U-City centered on a new city and closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance systems. However, it has failed to accumulate and make use of data and create private business. When putting big data and the IoT to practical use, it makes easier to detect signs of child abuse in early stage and plays a role as social safety net.

In this regard, global AI computing firm NVIDIA recently announced its deep learning-based AI city “Metropolis Intelligence Platform.” The platform collects CCTV surveillance camera data captured in major cities across the world in real time and analyze anonymized people, cars and facilities to raise public safety and management efficiency. 

According to a recently report released by British consulting firm Arthur D. Little (ADL), the smart city market will grow to US$2 trillion (2,200.6 trillion won) by 2020. It is regarded as business with high growth potentials. The South Korean government is also considering smart city projects as export models for emerging countries.

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