Deep Dive Smart City Hong Kong

The Smart City Blueprint

The city's smart city blueprint spans 6 main domains of interest.

• Smart Mobility

This section aims at developing the city's transportation system.

Efforts focus on providing real-time information on traffic, time to wait for public transportation, and applying IoT technology to the airport.

Another part of the mobility branch aims to bring bike lanes to the city and make it easier to walk, promoting environmental friendliness.

• Smart Living

This section covers Hong Kong residents' homes and their lifestyles.

Improvements in payment systems, accessibility of health records, and connectivity have already been made.

The focus is now on developing technology applications for the elderly, developing free public wifi, and lastly, increasing the use of digital identities across the public and private sectors.

The development of the octopus card is a great example of the development of a faster payment system.

• Smart Environment

This section is all about making Hong Kong greener and more livable.

Waste management, energy production, energy efficiency, and pollution monitoring have or are all being addressed.

This is done through the development of sensors, more investments in various sectors, and a 2050 plan for the future.

In short, these efforts aim at creating more renewable energy and ceasing the use of coal for daily electricity needs.

With this in mind, the smart city blueprint aims to adopt new green technologies, create a low-carbon, more sustainable environment, and optimize the use of city resources, including waste reduction, reuse, and recycling.

• Smart People

Focusing on education, the smart city's plan is to invest in research through STEM, facilitate the creation of internships and attract venture capital funds to invest in tech startups in Hong Kong.

The global goal is to bring more talent to Hong Kong and to help company innovation.

Both create a local source of technology professionals and potent companies.

• Smart Government

This part of the smart city blueprint aims to open data to everyone, helping the development of new applications.

Infrastructure is also extremely important to government departments as they have massively invested to bring the structure to where it needs.

This has enabled the development of 5G, the adoption of public cloud services, the improvement of cybersecurity capabilities, and most importantly, the introduction of Government-Wide Internet of Things Network (GWIN) based on various Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies to enhance city management.

• Smart Economy

This sector is one of the most important focus points of the city blueprint for Hong Kong.

All of the previous investments help create an interesting place for Fintech, Tourism, LawTech, R&D, and cutting-edge systems.

The city blueprint for Hong Kong aims to be future-proof, making businesses and the public explore what is possible.

The focus will now be on attracting businesses and the integration of recent technologies.

Smart City Development

Hong Kong is making large efforts to push itself to a world-class smart city.

As users access and visit the city's portal for administrative convenience, it becomes clear that Hong Kong is trying to move forward.

Facilitating the use of data, moving systems to the digital age, and investing in infrastructure is a sure ways to include tech in the city.

These efforts have not gone unnoticed since the covid crisis hit and as our worlds have moved faster than ever to a virtual space.

Despite all its efforts, the city still has a lot of rivals that attract competition.

Singapore may be the most well-known, but neighboring Shenzhen is close.

Mainland China also offers an attractive welcome package, only time will tell which territory the public and private sectors prefer.