2015年CRI Hong Kong on the Way to be A Smart City

A Smart City is a very comprehensive concept which brings together technology, government, and society to enable a smart economy, smart mobility 1, and a smart environment.Winnie Ho with Energizing 2 Kowloon East Office explains what has been done to transform the old industrial area of Hong Kong into a more livable place.

"Initially 3, we think this is a land supply project to resolve the lack of land in Hong Kong, but as we move on, there are a lot more. I always imagine can we have smarter traffic lights? Like a robotic police who can sense the real situation at road junction 4, analyze 5 the situation. How many times are you at road juncture 6 waiting for the red light to change, but there are actually no cars. If we can have a smarter system, we can make better use of time and space sharing in the city."

Hong Kong boasts one of the most advanced and efficient transportation networks in the world. Kowloon Motor Bus Company is a major transport operator in Hong Kong and carries 2.7 million passengers every day. The company's Head of Planning and Development, Alok Jain, says a mobile app has been launched, providing a wide range of information that passengers may need regarding buses.

"Doing a lot of layover management, journey time management of our buses, we can save a lot of miles while not affecting the delivery of services. At the same time, we've put what we call telematics equipment inside of our bus fleet, which allows us to monitor the precise location of the buses, the driving characteristics of the buses, which was designed to save some fuel. But what we have done is to utilize 7 this to create an estimated time of arrival system. "

Dominic Yin, who is in charge of the Hong Kong office of China Energy Conservation and Environment Protection Group, says they are trying to improve energy savings 8 and management in the process of urban development.

"Smart city involves everything, with energy and environment to be the bases. We are now concentrating in the Pearl River Delta 9 in order to establish some models that can be duplicated by other cities in China."

Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia in Spain, is ranked as one of the world's best "smart" cities for its development projects in mobility, energy, the environment and services. Xavier Vilalta with the Government of Catalonia shares the experience of Barcelona.

"For instance, the lighting 10 plan. It's not just sitting with suppliers and big companies hearing what they have to offer, but what you need in terms of lighting for your different roles. We have 5000 streets around Barcelona, they end up with 36 types of different streets that need different lighting, the city center, the industrial area, the residential 11 area, the sea part of the city, the mountain part of the city."

Hong Kong has well-developed IT infrastructure 12 with great Internet connectivity as well as mobile service, it is trying to adopt emerging technologies, like cloud computing 13 and big data, to make the city smarter.

For CRI, this is Li Jing in Hong Kong.