The Smart City Innovation Challenge, launched in July this year, sought smart city solutions in 12 key focus areas identified by the city governments and the smart city steering committees of Vietnam.
These include affordable housing, energy efficiency, traffic management and smarter parking, waste management, urban agriculture, water purification and delivery, public security and monitoring of natural disasters, ecotourism and environmental planning, health care, education, e-government services and more greenery and public spaces. The call specified that solutions should be suitable for Vietnam’s cities.
The competition received 197 submissions from over 30 countries. A selection committee of industry judges shortlisted the 15 finalists. They come from the United States, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey, Israel, China, Australia and Vietnam.
Three winners will be selected at the Demo Day. They will receive cash prizes and be linked to the cities’ acceleration programs to help localise their solutions. After that, the winners can secure projects if they meet the cities’ needs.
The judges award the prize for the first place winner
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TNB Ventures, a venture capital partner for Smart City Innovation Challenge Vietnam, will also consider Series A funding for high-potential companies.
Dominic Mellor, head of the Mekong Business Initiative (MBI), said that the demand for innovative solutions to develop cities in Vietnam has never been higher. Rapid development has pushed urban infrastructure beyond its capacity.
Speaking at the sideline of the event, Phan Dinh Tuan Anh, founder of Angles 4 Us, the largest private investment community in Vietnam, said that the 15 finalists all belong to reputable high-technology companies. The problem now is how to adjust the technology solutions to meet the needs of Vietnamese market and users. “These include price, application capacity and deployment scale,” he said.
Vietnam has one of the highest urbanisation speeds in Southeast Asia – 3.4 percent a year. Population in urban areas accounted for 35.7 percent of the national total. It is estimated that urban populations will reach 40 percent of the country’s total by 2020.
However, the quality of urban areas in Vietnam is low due to lack of integrated infrastructure and slowness in building it compared to socio-economic development. The conference was told the infrastructure system in big cities such as Hanoi and HCM City had been overloaded, causing regular traffic jams and floods.
“The vigorous development of cities presents decision-makers and urban planners with enormous infrastructure challenges. Not only is it important to guarantee a high quality of life for city dwellers, but also to ensure that metropolises remain economically competitive and that resources are handled responsibly,” he said.
Sharing experience in building smart cities in Germany, Jörg Rüger, First Secretary for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Urban Development at the Embassy of Germany in Hanoi, said digitalisation would fundamentally change the way people lived and worked.
“Smart cities are not an end in themselves. Instead, it is intended to serve sustainability goals at all levels, be it social, ecological or economic. With a new urban agenda, the United Nations had set new standards for urban development, putting the needs of people at the centre of action,” he said.
