Infocomm industries in Singapore and China will have more direct opportunities to collaborate on smart city developments in both countries under a new “Smart City Twinning” initiative.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Strategic Collaboration on Smart City Development was signed by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), International Enterprise (IE) Singapore and Suzhou Industrial Park Administrative Committee (SIPAC), at the 10th Sino-Singapore Joint Council for Bilateral Cooperation meeting on 22 October. The signing was witnessed by Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean and China’s Executive Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli.

The Sino-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) is one of the pioneers in smart city building with a reputation for openness to change and innovation as its key engine for growth, making it an attractive city to pilot and trial smart and sustainable solutions.

Under the smart city twinning partnership, IDA, IE Singapore and SIPAC will identify a suitable district in Singapore and SIP for pilots and trials of smart cities. An open and innovative procurement model such as Singapore’s “Call for Collaboration” methodology will be adopted, providing Singaporean and Chinese enterprises with a platform to demonstrate their capabilities in smart city technology. Governments of both countries will also have the opportunity to test out these innovative solutions before considering them for deployment in other cities or districts.

Mr Steve Leonard, Executive Deputy Chairman of IDA, said Singapore and China share a common vision of developing “smart” cities that are great places to work and to live. “Information technology is the backbone of any smart city, and the amount of data being created every day continues to explode. As a result, it becomes even more critical that we focus on innovations in how we capture, move and interpret that data in ways that allow us to improve the lives of our citizens.”

IDA will work with SIPAC to identify opportunities that build on the experience of Singapore companies to further develop the Suzhou Industrial Park. “Through the ‘twinning’ approach between Singapore and Suzhou Industrial Park, IDA looks forward to inspiring our local ‘tech talent’ to tackle important issues on a different scale,” added Mr Leonard.

Local enterprises in different sectors can look forward to collaboration opportunities in Intelligent Transport, Smart Education and Smart Environment Management. Cooperation in other areas such as Cloud Computing, Mobile Internet and the “Internet of Things” for smart city building, will also be accelerated.

Welcoming the collaboration, Mr Lee Fook Sun, President, ST Electronics, said, “The Smart City collaboration is exciting to ST Electronics as it fits well into our solutions offering for this market – for the SIP as well as to other cities in China. Our experience, track record and capabilities put us in a good position to work with city planners to implement smart, innovative technologies for better sustainability through the implementation of integrated transportation, infocomm technologies, smart utilities and efficient communications systems.”

Mr Shen Min, Country Director, NCS China, said the MOU has undoubtedly created great economic and development opportunities. “We hope to share our proven e-government best practices and experiences in integrating emerging technologies and solutions, particularly in the smart education arena, to help shape a sustainable urban transformation for Suzhou Industrial Park,” he said. “Aligning to the city’s ideologies and mapping out a comprehensive technology blueprint will be the initial steps towards smart city development and we look forward to enabling an innovative, connected and collaborative smart city. “

The MOU was signed by Mr Andrew Khaw, Senior Director, Industry Development Group of IDA, Mr Yew Sung Pei, Assistant Chief Executive Officer of IE Singapore and Mr Barry Yang, Chairman of SIPAC.