Chon Buri's Saensuk launches 3-year 'smart city' pilot project

With an area of 20 square kilometres, Saensuk City is suitable for a trial of the smart-city concept. Narongchai Khunpluem, mayor of the municipality, said the aim was to improve the lives and security of the 200,000 people who live in the city and around 1.7 million tourists who visit it annually. 

“We provide smart services and Internet infrastructure throughout the city, especially in the tourist areas,” he said.

He added that the city was now working to roll out smart service for tourists to notify them of tourism promotions, events, and local products and services via a smartphone application. The concept is to deploy low-energy Bluetooth in particular areas to provide locals and tourists with information relevant to those particular spots. 

“We will start the service in the third quarter of this year, collaborating with partners such as Dell Thailand and Intel Microelectronics Thailand. We have piloted several projects with the aim of turning Saensuk into a smart city.”

Narongchai said a smart city was not just about technology but required participation from all stakeholders, including governmental organisations, businesses, technology providers and the public.

“We want to be one of the examples of a smart city,” he said. 

Sontiya Nujeenseng, managing director of Intel Microelectronics (Thailand), said a smart city needed visionary leadership and a plan to make the city “intelligent” enough to address the requirements, which differed from city to city. 

According to the United Nations, by 2030, there will be around 28 mega-cities in the world, of which around 16 will be in Asia. Mega-cities need intelligent management for efficient provision of their resources, including energy, water and pollution control. 

“Left unchanged, rising populations and the subsequent impact on energy resources are creating an unsustainable future,” Sontiya said.

By 2025, 37 cities globally will have populations greater than 10 million, with 22 in Asia alone. At the same time, car ownership is projected to increase by 60 per cent, while by 2030 water demand could outstrip supply by 40 per cent. Today, cities already consume two-thirds of the world’s energy, and with demands increasing.

Intel says it is working with numerous partners to develop integrated solutions that will turn the world’s cities into smart cities thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT), which is a crucial technology that will drive the smart city. It presents a unique opportunity to address these issues, while driving local economies, reducing costs, increasing efficiencies and creating new services.

A smart city can be a matter of smart buildings, smart energy, smart manufacturing, smart transport and so on. 

Intel’s platform underpins many IoT applications in Asia by taking a horizontal approach. By integrating components from the sensor to the gateway to the data centre, innovations can be brought to market faster. Furthermore, it offers a defined repeatable foundation for how devices connect and deliver data via the cloud.

Intel plays a role in the areas critical to making IoT a reality, namely scalable silicon technologies for a wide range of devices, software including operating systems, tools, security, application programming interfaces, analytics, data-centre expertise, and a worldwide ecosystem of developers and system integrators.

Intel says its strategy is to combine hardware, software and service to solve customer challenges deploying IoT solutions, and grow their business. 

One example of a smart city in the United States collaborating with Intel is San Jose, California. By deploying environmental sensors, Intel Gateway Solutions and machine-to-machine communication, San Jose is expecting to foster 25,000 “cleantech” jobs, committing to its green vision while becoming more flexible and responsive to the escalating demands of current and future residents.

Meanwhile in Ireland, Intel and Dublin City Council have announced their collaboration to implement a city-wide IoT demonstration platform. The Gateway platforms based on Intel Quark processors will enable environmental sensing to improve the quality of life and help make the city run more efficiently.

Intel last week announced five new IoT pilots and deployments with its ecosystem in Taiwan. Intel hosted an IoT press conference during “Computex Taipei” and invited its customers, end users and collaborators to announce deployments, pilots and expansion plans to make IoT a reality in Asia and elsewhere in the world. 

Intel is collaborating with Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) to establish the smart-city IoT in Taiwan to help improve the quality of urban life. The solution uses the Intel IoT Gateway on a smart-city pole system to connect sensors located at streetlights or power stands. The gateway is used to manage the data collected for air quality, weather, traffic and power consumption. The system will also connect to a data centre for real-time analytics using Intel-based servers. 

The first-phase implementation will start at the end of the year in Taipei.

CHT is one of the first telecom carriers in Asia to collaborate with Intel for IoT. Their cooperation will expand to fleet-management, smart-home and smart-building projects in the near future.