“depa” Gears Up Developing Smart Cities in Thailand After Succeeding in Thailand Smart City Week 2020

 

October 22, 2020, depa Building Ladprao – The Digital Economy Promotion Agency (depa) announced the success of Thailand Smart City Week 2020 held to raise public awareness about smart city development in Thailand with more than 300,000 people attending the real digital event. It generated more than 300 million baht in circulation from business matching and negotiations. The depa will speed up providing support to smart city development projects through appointing “Mr. & Ms. Smart City” and launching the Smart City Boot Camp program as well as engaging with city transformations in different aspects. The smart city initiative is expected to generate investments worth more than 500 million baht.

Dr. Nuttapon Nimmanphatcharin, President/CEO of depa, reported the overall success of Thailand Smart City Week 2020 held on October 16–22, which showcased range of digital technologies and solutions for smart city development. The event was organized by the Smart City Thailand Office in the real digital style, which is the first of its kind in Thailand. He said Thailand Smart City Week 2020 can raise public awareness about smart city development in Thailand through the use of digital technologies and innovations. The event shared ideas and knowledge as people in general and stakeholders were allowed to provide inputs to jointly solve city problems. There were exhibitions featuring advantages of digital technologies for smart city development. The event also presented business matching opportunities on online platforms with a goal to drive Thailand toward an international smart city. The number of visitors and participants in four key digital-driven activities from across platforms totaled more than 300,000 people throughout the seven-day event. It was able to generate more than 300 million baht from business matching.

Moreover, Thailand Smart City Week 2020: Virtual Hackathon was also concurrently held to find the best and practical solutions to tackle city problems and deal with city management. There are three winning teams from all 12 teams participated. The winner is “AltoTech”, which came up with an innovative idea in efficient energy management for organizations through the participatory action and collective collaboration from people in an organization, including the use of data, smart devices and IoT technology. The first runner-up is “Workforce for Smart Labor Matching Platform”, which introduced the Empowering and Reskill platforms for businesses to create opportunities in reaching out to customer. The second runner-up was “Tinder for Trash”, which created a platform 

to integrate network of people who love and care for the environment in order to gather waste and properly dispose of it.

Dr. Nuttapon added that the depa will from now on gear up proceeding with the roadmap and promotion plans to develop smart cities in Thailand, focusing on three key areas. They are city transformations in different aspects in order to solve city problems as well as standardizing the city and improving the quality of life of people. The city transformations will be carried out with support from the network of digital startups and digital service providers. It aims to transform more than 200 communities and businesses via no less than 2,000 projects. Pushing for manpower development by creating new career paths such as jobs related to artificial intelligence (AI) and drone, etc. The depa also aims to develop more than 10 basic infrastructure projects in healthcare service, tourism and logistics. The depa gives priority to providing security for people through the launch of City Data Platform. It is estimated that the depa’s initiatives can generate public-private investments worth no less than 500 million baht.

“The depa will also appoint “Mr. & Ms. Smart City” in 30 designated zones that allow new generations who have new ideas about smart urban development to take part in solving city problems so as to create a more livable, smart city. They will receive a special training session and certificates from the depa. The Mr. & Ms. Smart City will serve as the bridge to help coordinate with local and rural agencies for a greater efficiency of smart city development and management. In addition, there will be the launch of Smart City Boot Camp program, in which all 40 zones designated for smart city development are allowed to share and exchange their ideas in order to incubate the smart city knowledge with suggestions from experts in different fields. All development projects will be forwarded to the National Smart City Steering Committee chaired by Deputy Prime Minister, General Prawit Wongsuwan for review and consideration.” said the president/CEO of depa.