NZ Smart City Initiatives at the Forefront

IDC NEW ZEALAND PRESS RELEASE
New Zealand Smart City Initiatives at the Forefront in Asia Pacific Awards

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND, August 8th, 2017

IDC Asia/Pacific has announced the winners for the IDC Smart City Asia Pacific Awards (SCAPA) 2017. Out of 14 categories, New Zealand projects won awards in four categories: Public Works; Smart Grid; Connected Health; and Tourism, Arts, Libraries, Culture, Open Spaces. This is the most number of wins by any country, and was followed by Singapore with three wins.

Associate Market Analyst Jefferson King said: "New Zealand has been a front runner of Smart City projects in all three years of these awards. Despite its size, New Zealand is punching well above its weight by delivering high quality, innovative Smart Cities projects, as evidenced by these awards." King continued to say "Being recognised regionally shows that organisations in New Zealand are successfully leveraging New Zealand's world class IT infrastructure to enable innovation."

In summary, the New Zealand winners and categories are as follows:

• NEC in the Public Works category. NEC in collaboration with the Wellington and Christchurch City Councils developed KITE, a standardised sensing platform that supports economic and environmental council initiatives by collecting sensor data. The platform gathers information on air quality, water quality, pedestrian mobility, waste management, parking, street lighting, solvent detection, and graffiti detection.
• Unison Networks in the Smart Grid category. Unison Networks has developed a long term Smart Grid strategy which includes using a range of sensors to improve performance and to enhance asset utilisation throughout the Unison Network. The Smart Grid will help minimise customers’ long term costs while maintaining their power quality needs.
• Qrious in the Tourism, Arts, Libraries, Culture, Open Spaces category. The Qrious Voyager portal uses big data and analytics solutions to analyse anonymous mobile location data. Voyager provides interactive tourism insights across New Zealand through an intuitive web portal.
• Waikato District Health Board in the Connected Health Category. SmartHealth is a Waikato DHB free online health service. Patients download the HealthTap app to connect to healthcare professionals across the region by video, voice and text link. It provides a knowledge base of doctor-approved health information, access to online doctors during evenings and weekends; and online appointments with hospital specialists without leaving your home. It’s particularly helpful for people living in rural areas who have poor access to doctors or have to travel long distances for short hospital appointments.

King continued to say, "It's an extraordinary achievement and we look forward to receiving more cutting-edge smart city innovation submissions next year."

Now in its third year, SCAPA recognises the most outstanding smart city projects in Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) across a total of 14 functional smart city award categories. This year 18 projects were named as the best in Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) chosen from a total of 46 finalists across APeJ.

IDC Government Insights' team went through a rigorous six-phased benchmarking exercise to determine the Top Smart City projects for 2016-17. These included identifying and cataloging the key Smart City projects in Asia/Pacific by IDC Analysts across APeJ (25%), online voting to determine public opinion (50%), and assessment by an International Advisory Council (25%).

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