Press Release for Smart City Innovative Application Award - 臺北產經資訊網

Starting from Mar. 27 to 30, 2018, the Smart City Summit & Expo. would be held at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center to ensure that all cities actively engage in the information infrastructure, and make good use of each local featured resources, and the manufacturers can actually implement the vision of the smart city. The general assembly has organized the “Smart City Innovative Application Award” for a fourth consecutive of 4 years, and provided a chance for all cities to learn from each other to improve the overall urban infrastructure and reach the goal of raising living standards by looking into the awarded cases of all district governments.

This year, Taipei City Government received 3 awards: the government innovative applications-smart government, smart transportation and smart security domain. It was ranked No. 1. Actions from the government may include the following — “Smartization of Roadside and Off-street Parking through Smart Payment Mechanism;” “Create World Internet of Vehicle Platform-First Self-Driving Vehicles Testing Field in Taiwan” and “Using IoT Technology-Construction of Feitsui Reservoir Area Smart Management System.” More details will be given as follows.

I. Pay.taipei

Taipei City Government had established the “pay.taipei” integrated platform system for smart payment since 2017 and run an investigation on public annual fee within city-affiliated agencies, and the transaction fee it receives from the public fees. It is estimated that there will be 200 public fees collected and rendered to the city government soon. First of all, most public fees collected from water bills, roadside parking fees, and Taipei City Hospital service fees, among others, through“pay.taipei”. Afterwards, all that will be required to be prepared is a 24-hour database system launched, which complies with the search results on the “pay.taipei” payment platform, canceled debts and refunded API if the city-affiliated agencies wish to introduce the smart payment. Once launched, the system is available for the interface and import. There’s no need to develop another similar system.

II. Application of Parking Smartization

The field of smart parking can be categorized into off-street parking and roadside parking. In terms of the off-street parking space, an eTag input device has been installed at the entrance and exit of the public parking spaces in Taipei. With the recognition system of integrated license plates, the car owner can enter the parking space without having to deal with ticket dispensers after he or she has registered to become a member since the system will detect the eTag or license plate automatically once the driver drives in. It can shorten entry and exit time and fulfills the goal of ticketless entry and exit. All transactions and related information will be processed through the pay.taipei platform.

As for the roadside parking space, it is assumed that the driver can search to see if there’s any vacancy left inside the public roadside parking space. After selecting the parking space the driver wishes to park at, the system will provide such route guiding service to show driver the way to park. After arriving at the destination and knowing where to park, the App will automatically position its location and the number of the parking space. The driver uses the App to request for a bill and the system will upload the collected data from the occupied parking space, and send it back to the cloud-based platform. Once driving away, the driver can use the online payment feature of the App to pay the bill right away. It is expected that in the future, management features will soon be available to some particular parking spaces and the car owner is allowed to search 24 hours a day online to check the information of current use of the roadside parking space.

The Taipei City Government has completed the test of self-driving bus at night on the bilateral bus lane on Xinyi Rd. in Aug., 2017 through Taipei Smart City Industrial Field Pilot Program. To expand the scope of empirical research, it held a campaign known as “Beitou Shilin Science Park Self-driving Empirical Field Project” within the 10-hectare empirical field at the Beitou Shilin Science Park. The government has established a complete road infrastructure. Vendors and research institutions are allowed to test the self-driving signal communication, intersection signal identification and passing technology. All the above actions are given to get ready for the road test. With the government as a platform, it connects all divisions from the industries, academic and researchers. For example, it invites the electronic vehicle (EV) vendors (such as Acer and Yulon), the electronic components vendors for cars (such as Forward Electronics, Haitec, Whetron Electronics), and transfers technology through these units (such as Industrial Technology Research Institute, Advanced Power Research and Development Center of NTU) to integrate the ecosystem of related industries from the self-driving EV. Taipei City Government will continue to build a friendly environment for self-driving cars in all fields in Taipei. It keeps promoting the innovative power of its smart transportation service.

1. Smart Security Monitoring

People, vehicle and ship positioning tracking monitoring system; physical electronic fence; and upload of entry access alarm data to LoRa network. All the information will be integrated and displayed on the screens of the control center, and the figure data on the screens can be utilized for setting the control area (Virtual electronic fences), enabling staff members to manage and handle situation. It helps to build the smart management system for the Taipei Feitsui Reservoir Area.

2. Monitoring Data Backup and Rescue

The applied monitoring equipment for reservoir is included (such as the hydrological station, weather station, damp inclinometer probe, etc.). In addition to the wired and wireless transmission, the government takes advantage of the LoRa network to upload data to the server database as a data instant monitoring and backup.

Taipei City Government tries to work with the private sectors to create the smart city by introducing an open domain through public-private partnerships (PPP). The empirical field is regarded as the provider for all smart solutions so that the private vendors can fully exert their innovations. The abundant results accumulated throughout these years have also received plenty of positive feedback and received awards from other foreign and domestic smart cities. In future, Taipei City Government will continue to implement the ICT application, and try to make that a reality for the daily life of its citizens. Further actions will be spread across the smart transportation, smart security, smart ecology, and other smart innovation domain. The government will seek to export the successful experience to the world, build a smart industry supply chain and make Taipei the leading pioneer of the smart city.