HUAWEI INNOVATION DAY ASIA: BUILDING INNOVATION ECOSYSTEMS TO CREATE SMART CITIES

Having a strong Wi-Fi connection is just one of the many components of creating an infrastructure for a smart city.

The first Huawei Innovation Day Asia lays the groundwork for improving the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure to meet the demands of an ever-growing urban population. Smart city solutions, such as the adoption of ICT technologies and the embedding of intelligent systems within buildings, transportation networks as well as utility grids, will play an increasingly important role in addressing these challenges.

SINGAPORE— According to the Asian Development Bank, around 44 million people are being added to Asia’s urban population each year. This population explosion poses a big challenge to the existing transportation, power and utility networks of a city resulting in problems such as traffic congestion, power outages inadequate waste management and a general decrease in the quality of life.

With the continued rise of the urban population, the need for more intelligent and highly connected “Smart Cities” with a strong ICT infrastructure has never been more urgent. This was the recurring message of the inaugural Huawei Innovation Day Asia, held November 12, 2015 at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore.

Innovation Day is a flagship series focused on global innovation hosted by Huawei. Thus far, Huawei Innovation Day has been successfully held in Stockholm, Milan, and Munich hosted by Huawei. The first Huawei Innovation Day Asia in partnership with the National University of Singapore, aims to build a platform for ICT players in Asia to communicate how to build an ecosystem.

The forum attracted almost 200 regional government officials, as well as experts from universities and research institutions who discussed a wide range of topics, including transforming mega cities for a Smarter Asia through Better Connection.

In his keynote speech Singapore’s Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr S. Iswaran acknowledged that the forum came at a timely juncture given Asia’s rapid urbanization and growing urban population.

He noted that technological innovation will have a profound impact on the nature of jobs, the viability of business models, and the structure of economies.

“Technological innovation in recent decades, especially in ICT, has created tremendous value in the global economy. It has been driven by consumers’ and businesses’ demand for novel and effective products and services, as well the supply of creative and ingenious solutions… New jobs, businesses and sectors will be created; some may be modified or enhanced; yet others will be significantly disrupted and risk becoming irrelevant.”

Iswaran pointed out that every country must assess the future of its economy against the backdrop of these global technological trends. “How do we ensure an economic environment that promotes the creation and adoption of new technology solutions? What capabilities should we invest in and nurture to support this goal? And how do we foster an open innovation framework that stimulates public-private partnerships and yields greater economic benefits through the commercialization of our R&D?”

“Addressing clear and present needs in the market is a key impetus for innovation. That is how Singapore has developed niche capabilities and built a strong track record in certain sectors such as urban services and water.”

The latest Huawei Global Connectivity Index 2014 has shown that ICT infrastructure is pivotal to national competitiveness and it is estimated that a 20 percent increase in ICT investment will increase a country’s GDP by 1 percent. Big Data is a key for supporting smart operations and plays an integral role in building smart cities.

Li Jin Ge, Huawei President of Asia Pacific Region, said:” ICT technologies, particularly broadband, cloud computing, Big Data, and the Internet of Things, is already driving the digitization of all industries. These technologies are also promoting improvements in planning and construction, management and operations, livable environments, and human touch in cities around the world.” With Big Data and other technologies, many cities, such as New York, Dubuque, Chicago, Seattle, London, Copenhagen, Lyon, Barcelona, Santander, Amsterdam, and Singapore, have taken the lead in launching mega city initiatives.

ROLE OF THE GOVERNMENT
Tan Kok Yam, Head of the Smart Nation Program of Singapore suggested several roles for governments in building of a smart nation.

The first and most important is that governments should ask the right questions, or at least the questions that point them in the right direction.” he said.

“In the Smart Nation framework… we don’t start from the point of view of the technology, we start from the point of view of the citizen. How do you improve quality of life? How do you create opportunities for businesses and people? How do you bring people and society closer and create a more cohesive community through use of digital platform and other means to link people up?”

Second, he said is that governments must support the creative process– but not take over. This includes include incubation for tech startups, financial support and datasets open to the public, Tan said.

“Part of the creativity process includes creating spaces for experimentation.” Tan mentioned that Singapore has several test beds, including the Jurong Lake District area for testing smart municipal services, the One-North area for testing autonomous vehicles, Yuhua where smart homes are being studied, and Sentosa for more tourist-focused applications. He also talked about phase 2 of Fusionopolis which is a visible marker of Singapore’s investment in research and development as well as the JTC Launchpad where 500 startups and 2000 innovators are housed in Blocks 71, 73 and 79.

But test beds need not be physical, said Tan. Last month the Monetary Authority of Singapore, set up a fintech regulatory sandbox, where the rules are relaxed to facilitate innovation. “The intent is to give people with an idea a place to test their ideas in real life,” he said.

FinTech Sandbox is a Boston-based nonprofit that helps FinTech startups around the world build great products and applications.

Lastly, governments have to prepare to and prepare for change, which brings everything back full circle to asking the right questions.

POWER OF ICT AND THE RISE OF IOT
ICT technology also has the potential to transform business models. Stephen Ezell, Vice President Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, shared that the success of e-commerce in China, underpinned by ICT technologies, has created a new digital economy that has transformed the lives of millions of consumers and small enterprises.

“ICTs are modern global economies’ greatest driver of innovation productivity and growth, it represents what economists call GPT or General Purpose Technologies– tech systems that impact and transform virtually every element of business and society. ICT are GPTs because they enable productivity and innovation every sector of the economy. Today ICT industries account for 6 percent of world’s global economy,” Ezell noted in his presentation.

According to Tekes, Finland’s national Agency for Technology and Innovation estimates that by 2025 half of all value generated in the global economy will be created through digital means the ability to extract actionable insight from data.

ICTs are vital to all countries economic development whether you are a developing or developed country. Manchester University professor Richard Meeks, estimates ICTs will contribute one quarter of GDP growth in many developing countries during this first decade.

The application of ICT infrastructures to tackle urban challenges …support social and urban growth by improving the city’s economy, a city government’s efficiency and citizens involvement.

One reason the world has changed substantially is because of the Internet Of things (IoT). This refers to the ability to connect all kinds of devices to the internet.

“In 1986, throughout the entire the world, there were just 300 devices connected to the internet in 2010 there were 2.3 billion devices connected and by 2025 over 50 billion devices will be connected creating 11 trillion dollars of economic value for the world annually.”

Ezell said, “the importance of Smart cities are two fold; one, it can create new market opportunities. And the second more important reason is because they are about delivering real-time actual information to citizens and administrators, in a way that gives them the ability to change their behavior in meaningful ways to society.”

Smart cities also result into better city planning and development and faster e-government services delivered to citizens for less. Another benefit is that it can help “incentivize” desired citizen behaviors to ease road congestion, as in the case of Singapore’s Electronic Road Pricing (ERP), or resolve urban challenges such as waste management.

Ezell also cited Barcelona as an example. “Barcelona introduced an app that helped drivers find available parking, which actually accounted for 26 percent of traffic in urban areas—with the app Barcelona was able to make parking space available and reducing the time it took to find a parking space from 17 minutes to 5 minutes. Another example was the Streetbump application created by the city of Boston. “When you drive over a street bump the phone records the location and alerts the city administrator which then sends a crew to fix the street immediately.”

“For a city to be globally competitive in the world of tomorrow the key is going to be making them intelligent. The cities that deploy these types of solutions and applications will not only bolster their own economic growth and improve the lives of its citizens but they will provide an environment and a platform in which innovative companies can foster development of these types of solutions.”

SAFE CITY, SMART CITY
Joe So, Huawei’s CTO for Industry Solution, defines a smart city as a program of initiatives undertaken by a city owner, operator or governing entity in order to improve the quality of experience for residents, business and visitors by using ICT.

“Cities are going to be more and more crucial to life as we know it, the UN estimates that 67% of the world’s population will live in a city by 2050. Why? Because of expectations of a better quality of life, prosperity, better job and security.”

The move he said, presents challenges on maintaining public safety, traffic congestion, and managing scarce resources, as such smart city technology will be crucial in helping governments to improve the quality of urban experience.

“While there is widespread acceptance that technology will improve cities, the problem is that government solutions often exist in silos instead of being integrated through horizontal smart city platforms. Our concept of Smart city is to build everything under one platform it can be scalable it can be extendable.”

In the case of an emergency response activity, for example, So explained that having an integrated system would allow simultaneous access of data—while the ambulance is being dispatched, the paramedics can already check the patient’s health records while the policemen can survey and map out the best route back to the hospital.

“It is all related. Our concept is to build an interdependency of data within the government. Interdependency is very important to any smart city program and Huawei has developed methodologies for all aspects of building smart cities, from feasibility studies and concept designs, to deployments.

Huawei’s smart city model involves several layers: “The first layer are the sensors capturing data at the lowest layer. Today we still talk about cameras, but tomorrow may be totally different, it could be robots, it could be vehicles or anything on the street.”

The second layer is the telecommunications infrastructure, where Huawei is very strong at. This includes the wired and wireless network, or the connections; without this you will be going nowhere.

The next is the IT or computing platform that will calculate the data, and make sense of the data so that all this information can be distributed to different sectors like utility, security, health care and transportation.

“Remember, there is no such thing as a smart city unless you have the connections and collaboration of each of the system.” So added.
“Before you can start any smart city, I believe the most important thing is to have a vision. Where do you want to go? What do you want to build? What is your objective? Every city has different kinds of pains—you need to address your pain.”

“And the most important thing to remember when you build a smart city, don’t just involve the government, you need to involve your citizens, because they will be the end users.”

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