Northern Taiwan’s Taoyuan City and southern Taiwan’s Chiayi City were named among the world’s top seven intelligent communities by New York-based International Community Forum at a ceremony Feb. 9 in Taipei City.
The list recognizes cities, counties and rural areas that use digital tools to foster local economic and social development. Taoyuan, Chiayi and the other locations in the top seven will now vie for the title of Intelligent Community of the Year, with the winner to be disclosed at ICF’s Intelligent Community Summit and Awards Dinner June 8 in New York.
“Taiwan has consistently recorded impressive performances in the ICF rankings,” Minister of Economic Affairs Lee Chih-kung said at the ceremony. “This is because the criteria that Taiwan has established for building smart cities are in line with the six intelligent community indicators on which the selections are based, namely broadband, knowledge workforce, innovation, digital equality, sustainability and advocacy.”
According to ICF, Taoyuan earned recognition for the i-Taoyuan Free Wi-Fi 2.0 project launched last year to optimize the city’s existing wireless network services and expand the number of free Wi-Fi hot spots. Chiayi impressed the judges with its Community Home Medical Care and Palliative Care Network program, which aims to link senior and health care facilities through the city’s Smart Health Cloud Platform.
The same day in Taipei, the MOEA and ICF jointly staged an international forum on smart city development and announced the establishment of ICF Taiwan as part of the ICF Nations network.
Taiwan is just the second country, after Canada, to join ICF Nations, which aims to strengthen connections among countries dedicated to building intelligent communities. ICF Taiwan is chaired by Stan Shih, founder of Taiwan-based Acer Inc., one of the world’s leading computer technology enterprises.
Minister without Portfolio Wu Tsung-tsong said that ICF Taiwan will further the nation’s status as a hub of smart city technologies and foster interactions between Taiwan and emerging nations across the region in line with the government’s New Southbound Policy. A key component of President Tsai Ing-wen’s national development strategy, the policy seeks to deepen agricultural, business, cultural, education, trade and tourism links with the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations member states, six South Asian countries, Australia and New Zealand.
Founded in 1999 to promote the broadband economy and information technology, ICF picks the Intelligent Community of the Year on an annual basis. This process begins with the selection of the Smart21 Communities in the fall of the previous year before seven finalists are chosen from among this group.
To date, 13 cities and counties in Taiwan have been featured in the Smart21 Communities, several of which have been recognized on more than one occasion including Taoyuan, which has made the list a total of seven times. Taipei and central Taiwan’s Taichung City were named Intelligent Community of the Year in 2006 and 2013, respectively. (OC-E)
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