Smart Cities – Golden Opportunity for Innovation and Investment 

As cities continue to evolve, the concept of a “smart city” has emerged to address social issues and improve quality of life. With technological advancements, smart cities offer promising opportunities for startups to innovate and impact positively. 

Smart Cities – The Advantages And Potential For Sustainable Development  

Allied Market Research shows that the global smart city market will grow 25.2% from 2021 to 2030. By 2050, the global population is predicted to exceed 10 billion people. , with 70% settled in urban areas. In addition, governments and non-profit organisations are also promoting innovative city initiatives. In Vietnam, the sustainable, creative city development project for 2018-2025 and its orientation to 2030 has brought a great advantage to intelligent city deployment. 

Vietnam’s innovation startup ecosystem is increasingly complete with the cooperation of the Government, ministries, startup organisations and investors, which is an opportunity for startups to develop innovative city solutions. These startups can use technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, blockchain, etc., to create intelligent products and services that help manage and operate the system more efficiently urban systems. 

Features used to solve smart city problems (Source: Almihat MGM) 

Besides improving people’s quality of life, through the combination of technology elements, Smart City is bringing many benefits to the community: 

• Socio-economic: the need to build intelligent cities will attract startups in this field. They are creating job opportunities in engineering, technology, analysis and urban planning,…. helping the local economy to be more vibrant and grow significantly. 
• Security: visibility features help with verification, monitoring, and identification for the timely detection and resolution of emergencies. 
• Environment: applications that help save energy, use renewable energy sources, etc. will help minimise adverse environmental impacts. 

The Innovative Applications Driving Smart City  

Many startups are operating in Smart Cities, focusing on developing technology solutions to solve urban problems. There are some typical startups: 

Smart City Factory – Edge Processing Solutions 

Smart City Factory from Germany uses secure data communication and processing solutions to develop smart cities. This startup offers a wireless and sensor-controlled lamp management system that uses on-demand lighting for remote control and energy savings. At the same time, this startup also provides an innovative parking solution to improve the efficiency of smart parking through the ability to develop vacancies in real time. The intelligent security platform also detects and analyses audio and video to ensure public safety. 

Senstate – Air & Water Quality Monitoring Solutions 

Senstate from Bulgari is an integrated platform for building and managing sensor networks to make intelligent decisions about innovative city development. Products such as the Urban Air Quality Station enable real-time detection and localisation of outdoor air pollution by calculating and visualising the Air Quality Index (AQI). The company’s water quality station ensures continuous water quality monitoring in rivers and reservoirs and provides statistical information on water resources’ chemical or biological conditions. Sensate significantly improves the environmental stability and efficiency of cities and infrastructure. 

Busmap – Smart Transportation & Bus Tickets Solution 

Busmap is a Vietnamese startup developed in 2013. This application helps users conveniently take the bus with innovative route-finding features, indicating the best distances by bus. Based on GPS technology and artificial intelligence (AI), users can know the bus arrival time with a delay of less than 1 minute. Furthermore, the feature helps users to find the nearest station and display it visually on the map. In addition, data on bus routes, fares, running times, and stops… are constantly updated for convenient lookup. In 2020, Busmap was the only Vietnamese startup to win the ITU Digital World Awards, organised by the International Telecommunication Union in the “Smart City – Smart Living” category. 

The cities are facing many challenges in management and development. With Smart City, the startup has a promising opportunity to develop advanced technology solutions, helping to improve people’s quality of life and enhance urban management efficiency. 

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