TAIPEI (TVBS News) — The Smart City Summit and Expo held at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center this week featured some impressive demonstrations of how AI, IoT, and 5G technologies are set to transform urban life. From smarter traffic management and more convenient public transportation services to personalized healthcare and reduced carbon emissions, the 450 exhibitors at the event presented a wealth of innovative solutions for improving the lives of city dwellers and changing the way cities operate.
One of the highlights at the show was the Civil IoT Taiwan platform, which incorporates AI, digital twins, and other emerging technologies to improve the detection of earthquakes, typhoons, rockslides, and other potential natural disasters and enhance the response of government agencies towards them. The P-Waver Early Earthquake Warning System provided a striking example of the advanced technology that is being deployed as part of the platform. The system is being is also being employed by leading IC foundries and the Taiwan High Speed Railway System to prevent disruptions to production and train services.
The National Center for High-performance Computing also demonstrated several interesting initiatives that it is undertaking, including the development of language AI models for facilitating the development of translation, text-to-speech, and speech recognition applications for the languages and dialects of Taiwan's 16 indigenous tribes.
Taiwan's city governments were particularly keen to showcase the steps they are taking to develop smart city infrastructure and applications. New Taipei City, for example, highlighted its program to install 5G smart poles on 1,400 sites to enable smart lighting, environmental sensing, people and vehicle flow monitoring, parking guidance, digital signages, and a host of other services. The smaller central city of Chiayi put its focus on law enforcement, promoting what it described as Taiwan's "first smart patrol box" which it claims reduces paperwork and increases the effectiveness of police officers through the collection of real-time patrol data.
Although the focus of the show was on urban use cases, there were also some excellent examples of how AI and IoT are being deployed in rural areas to revitalize local agriculture. Most notably, The Yunlin County government showed how it has enabled a local goose farm to increase breeding success rates from 70% to 90% and enhance egg production using smart sensing technologies. By automating feeding, egg collection, and coop cleaning, the farm has also doubled its efficiency and reduced its workforce requirements at a time of acute labor shortages.
In addition to demonstrating the pivotal role that AI, IoT, and 5G will play in shaping the future of urban and rural development, the 2024 Smart City Summit and Expo highlighted how close collaboration between Taiwan's government agencies and its world-beating technology industry can serve as a global model for accelerating technological innovation to meet the critical social, economic, and environmental challenges we are facing. The potential for creating a brighter and more sustainable world for everyone with these advancements is enormous.