Many of you might have heard of a Smart City through the news recently, it is one of Thailand’s’ 4.0 economic development models, a project to increase the efficiency of the city’s services and management. From now on, technology will become more significant in driving Thailand to the future development in every aspect, such as; environmental and energy management, economic development, government services, public utility system development, transportation and safety to upgrade Thailand in becoming a smart city in ASEAN while improving the quality of life and boost happiness to its citizens.
We are on the move of developing energy management in Thailand, use PTT Public Company Limited for example, a big oil and gas company using AI technology to collect and analyze the energy consumption data in buildings to forecast the amount of electric power needed to produce from each source of electric power. By using the record-keeping technology or Blockchain to trade electric power between buildings, further supports the use of alternative energy and optimize its use.
Many Thai government agencies have already carried out AI technology to develop and improve services they provide to citizens. In the past, citizens who have used their services, have had delayed and dissatisfied services. Smart technology has been able to handle some of the tasks for officers. For example; document sorting, face scanning and document analysis have taken care of by AI so that officers will have time to do other tasks efficiently giving r faster and accurate results.
Apart from transportation development management we use with AI, we have also used data analytics with AI from CCTV to collect movement of vehicles and traffic congestion data at each time period as well as road accident statistics so that traffic problems can be solved accordingly. Police officers can then plan traffic routes and control the traffic lights effectively. The monitor of traffic can be viewed in real time to actively adapt the traffic route plan in a timely manner.
Another good example in a stage of becoming a smart city is the improvement of waste collection service. Nowadays, many private and government agencies are promoting waste segregation to citizens by providing knowledge and how to dispose of waste, but they don’t seem to perceive it in the right way. Where China, the world's second-largest producer of waste with its 1.3 billion population which is 20 times more than Thailand, managed to achieve this issue using the rising technology of Virtual Reality (VR) to scan different types of waste through smartphone cameras and categorize the disposed waste types and find a way to manage it properly. China is also in the process of improving the application to help with selling waste from their homes. Thus, waste management is a key factor of smart cities.
These are some examples of rising technologies that have been incorporated in developing the country to become a smart city. With this said, becoming smart does not only include new technologies but bring them into implementation while engaging and sharing knowledge to citizens and what they can do to help build a smart city for all.