What Can Indonesia Learn from the Top 5 Smart Cities in the World?

Based on the latest United Nations estimates, Indonesia has reached the population number of roughly 268,722,947 as of Saturday, March 16, 2019. Additionally, Badan Pusat Statistik (BPS) predicted there will be 56,7% population growth in Indonesia’s big cities in 2020. Indonesian cities are preparing for this growth by implementing smart solutions that can help make city living a little less congested and much safer.

One of Indonesia’s smart city pioneers is Jakarta. Jakarta’s Smart City (JSC) program has been actively making a difference in the city since its launch in 2014. With the help of technological advancements, JSC, who received roughly 15,000 reports per day, has successfully cut down on the time spent resolving them from 300 hours to 28 hours on average. That’s more than 10x of increased productivity! Although JSC ranked 47th in the world’s top 50 smart cities, there are still some room for improvements.

Let’s look at the top 5 smart cities in the world like London, Singapore, Seoul, New York, and Helsinki, and find out what solutions Jakarta and other Indonesian smart cities can learn from them:

London - Datastore
Turned 9 last January, the City Hall’s London Datastore is a free and open data-sharing portal where anyone can access data relating to London. Created by the Greater London Authority, its mission is to make the England capital’s data fully accessible for anyone and encourage its use to bring the potential social, economic, and environmental value to reality. Moreover, the 700 datasets provided by London Datastore will help London citizens to fully understand the city and develop solutions to London’s problems.

Singapore - Police Surveillance Cameras
Primarily, the use of surveillance cameras in Singapore, as well as many parts of the world, is for crime prevention. However, with time, both the Singaporean government and the police force have developed new uses for it: monitoring traffic in the big city, observing industrial processes, even detecting anomalous events such as persons fighting. Looking at the fact that there were approximately 32,000 crimes reported in Jakarta last year, surveillance cameras surely have its advantages to lower Jakarta’s crime rate.

Seoul - Recharging Road for OLEV-powered Vehicles
On March 2010, the world’s first commercial wireless Online Electronic Vehicle (OLEV) was introduced to the public at Seoul Grand Park, Seoul, South Korea. Nine years later, it’s still one of the most groundbreaking eco-friendly inventions of the modern era. According to the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), which developed the environmentally friendly transportation system, OLEV only needs a battery one-fifth the size of conventional EVs, thus reduces the need for major recharging. To support the vehicle itself, they use magnet-inducing cables placed beneath the road, transferring electricity to the OLEV.

New York - Smart Waste Management
New York City’s Department of Sanitation takes care of more than 80,000 tonnes of waste and recyclables every week, more challenging than Jakarta which generates up to 43,750 tonnes of trash every week. However, the amount of waste constantly changes depending on various factors: weather conditions, events and the pedestrian flow. To tackle this issue, New York City introduced Bigbelly, recycle bins equipped with wireless trash sensors and Wi-Fi hotspots. With the help of solar-powered compaction, Bigbelly smart recycle bins can store about 5 times more waste than any other everyday garbage bins. Moreover, this collaborative effort between Bigbelly and the Government of the New York City help the government gather data about waste management and display public service announcements and alerts.

Helsinki - Kalasatama Agile Pilot Program
Kalasatama, a smart city district in Helsinki, Finland, aims to keep Helsinki a fast-growing and a comfortable city to live in. It won’t be that hard for Helsinki to reach its goal, thanks to the Kalasatama Wellbeing pilot program, a program that focuses on creating digital solutions that support urban developments in collaboration with the government and the district’s residents. One of the program’s implementation is the Kalasatama’s KNX standard automations of the building services engineering. This system steers the function of the buildings like heating, lighting and safety technology in a flexible and energy-efficient way. As a result of the program’s implementation, Helsinki and Kalasatama were awarded at Finland’s KNX Contest relating to smart energy category in 2018.

So, what about Indonesia’s homegrown smart solutions? Well, we’re not that far behind. jakarta has a smart waste management solution called Smash Bin, and a tech-innovation program at Telkomsel called TINC. However, in order for the whole city to maximize on its benefits, solutions and programs like these need to be widely supported by every part of the city, from the government, tech innovators, corporations, to the residents. Maybe then an Indonesian city can be a part of the most influential smart cities on Earth.

Do you want to be a part of the smart city development in Indonesia? Get connected with a mentor in your the industry of your seeking, and begin developing your own smart solution at TINC.