Smart city projects in Christchurch, Canterbury and elsewhere have been named among 14 top smart city projects in IDC’s 2016 Smart City Asia Pacific Awards (SCAPA), with IDC singling out New Zealand’s achievement in its announcement.
“The most outstanding projects recognised by IDC’s SCAPA in these categories came from all over Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ), with Singapore and New Zealand coming up as the biggest winners with three awards each,” IDC said.
New Zealand winners were the Forward Works Spatial Coordination project in Christchurch, winner in the public works category; Environment Canterbury’s Matrix of Good Management Farm Portal, winner in the Land Use and Environmental Management category; Energy Market Service’s load forecast services, deployed in several cities, winner in the Smart Grid category.
IDC said the winners had been selected through “a rigorous six-phased benchmarking exercise.” This included benchmarking by IDC analysts, online voting by members of the public and input from an international advisory council.
Gerald Wang, IDC’s Head, Asia Pacific Government and Education, said: “The Smart City momentum is growing extensively in the Asia Pacific (AP) region as many nations see it as an organic, bottom-up and middle-out innovation growth that will spearhead the next cycle of eGovernment evolutions.”
He added: “While at least 90 percent of all AP local governments or smart cities’ growth leverage funds that are provided by central or federal functions, many of them are notably given the autonomy to create their own unique identity in city governance, strategic operations and provisioning of effective eServices.”
“There is notably a growing prevalence of citizen-directed initiatives and driving local industries, which ultimately contributes back to stimulating domestic social and economic sustainability. This year’s submissions and winners highlight the impacts of climate change and slowing global trade.”
The Forward Works Spatial Coordination project is part of the Canterbury Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) Programme led by the New Zealand Geospatial Office at Land Information New Zealand. It was put in place to accelerate recovery from the earthquake through improved sharing and use of location-based information, and to make these innovations available to other cities.
According to the abstract of a presentation on it, the Forward Works Spatial Coordination project “ensures that anyone who is repairing physical infrastructure or constructing new buildings can see others’ intentions far enough in advance to avoid expensive clashes and delays. It aggregates data from public sector asset owners, utilities, and private sector property developers through standards-based feeds into a single spatial and temporal viewer. It also makes this aggregated data available for modelling impacts on the labour and physical materials supply and transport networks.”
Environment Canterbury’s Farm Portal was developed to enable the public to access the Matrix of Good Management (MGM). It was developed in collaboration with end users so that they could identify their farm and upload the details necessary to calculate nutrient losses. It also earlier this year won the 2016 Association of Local Government Information Management GIS Project of the Year award.