Future Vision: How Vietnam is Envisioning Building Smart Cities

As a country Vietnam is envisioning towards building Smart Cities and keeping this in mind, the seminar "Building smart cities: Vision and Strategies” was organized within the framework of the event "Smart Industry World 2017" on December, 5. Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Phan Tam attended the event.

Deputy Minister Phan Tam said that in Vietnam, the urbanization was happening at a fast pace and on a large scale. However, Vietnam is currently experiencing similar difficulties as other countries in the world in the process of building smart cities.

As the state management agency in the field of information technology, Ministry of Information and Communications is actively coordinated with the Ministry of Construction and other relevant ministries and agencies to conduct researches on smart cities, participate in international and national seminars to share information with local and international experts.

According to the Deputy Minister, the Ministry of Information and Communication has developed a draft of principles and orientations in building smart cities in Vietnam and is asking for opinions of localities, ministries and branches. . Basically, the guidelines is based on smart cities construction recommendations of international standards organizations such as ITU, ISO, BSI (UK), USA ... in combination with initial research and deployment. The guidelines are included general concepts, objectives, principles, ICT architecture,… of smart cities. It is expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2018.

After that, MIC will test in some localities to finalize and issue the Smart City Assessment Criteria 1.0. Through practical application, the ministry will continue to improve in its next version.

At present, more than 20 localities are developing smart city projects. Some localities have approved the master plan such as Ho Chi Minh City, Bac Ninh, Quang Ninh, Binh Duong.

At the seminar, representatives from the European Trade Association shared their experiences in building smart cities in Europe. Schneider Electric representatives introduced solutions to build smart buildings. Meanwhile, the representative of HCM City introduced the vision and master plan for smart city development in HCMC.