Busan is good

Busan u-city project realizes the very dream towards the 21st state of art intelligent city

Contents

u-City / Busan

City problems like terrible traffic congestion and high level of logistics cost, demand the innovative city operation system for global competitiveness.

Aiming to build a ubiquitous IT-based innovative city, Busan Metropolitan City(called as BMC) has mapped out the five major strategies for city informatization: administration informatization, everyday life informatization, location and space informatization(GIS), industrial informatization, and informatization of H/W infrastructure.

" By 2010, our city will pour a total of 343.9 billion won ($362 million) into the five ubiquitous-IT strategies," emphasized Jung Hyun-Min, DG of Planning, BMC.

Firstly, Busan City will build infrastructure for informatization over the next two years. And then it will construct a system linking various information sources to an application S/W, which will expand information service channels into various sectors. In the third stage, the city will promote reliability in the information system among citizen by up-grading the information services and building a system for recovering disasters.

For administrative informatization, the city will invest 29.3 billion won in 15 projects, including construction of a system for citizens' policy suggestions, an online information open system, and a mobile onthe- spot administrative process system.

For everyday life informatization, Busan will make investments of 45.6 billion won into the 16 projects, including an integration of homepages under the control of the city, a social welfare integration system, the U-museum solution, and a Busan one-stop life portal system.

Busan will pour 208 billion won into the 24 projects for city infra informatization, including an intelligent transportation system (ITS), space data warehouse (SDW) and a general information system for waterworks, to build a future-oriented intelligent city.

For industrial informatization, the city will also spend almost 20 billion won in 13 projects, including an industrial information service portal, a harbor logistics business assistance system, to build a city opening the opportunity to the new industry.

Busan will also invest 41.08 billion won in six projects for information infrastructure, including construction of a Busan data center and the Busan information super-highway.

Through the U-City project, Busan will provide citizens with better information and services, improving the quality of life of Busan citizens, promoting regional economy and improving competitiveness of the city, Jung said.

To establish the marine Capital city of the era of Northeast Asia in the 21st century, Busan City has pursued the Busan UCity project as a innovative strategy for city development.

Under the Busan U-City project, Busan applies the next-generation ubiquitous technology to the city's main infrastructure and industries, including harbor, transportation and convention.

It is the very strategy of city innovation in the 21st century to solve various city problems, including traffic congestion, an increase in logistics costs and aging population, and to create new growth engine of the city economy, as well as to strengthen the city's global competitiveness.

In particular, the Busan U-City project is designed to activate the existing large city with a population of 4 million by making the most of its characteristics. So, it is a differentiated strategy from other cities' new development projects.

Busan City, under the close cooperation with KT, has completed the setup of the ubiquitous strategy plan (USP) for the four

sectors; U-Port, U-Traffic, U-Convention, and U-Health.

It plans to invest a total of 800 billion won in U-infrastructure and services of the USP by 2010.

Linked with the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries and the Busan Port Authority (BPA), Busan City plans to build the next-generation ubiquitous (U)-port, which is able to grasp information on location and status of cargo in real time by preparing an integrated community base and applying such ubiquitous technologies as radio frequency identification (RFID).

To this end, it plans to introduce a total of 11 services, including the Busan port PCP service and the RFID-based linkage transportation integrated service.

The vision of the U-Traffic is to create a transportation system for activating the Busan economy by applying advanced electronics information communication technology to the existing transportation constitution factors such as roads and vehicles and providing traffic users and pedestrians with useful information.

To this end, Busan City will push for five short-term tasks, including an electronic toll collection service, a public transportation information service and a traffic information integrated service, and eight long-term tasks, including a parking information service and the mass transportation fee payment service.

Under the U-Convention project, Busan City will offer users of exhibition, convention and tourism services necessary information by making the use of ubiquitous technology and ubiquitous network environment.

It will also build ubiquitousbased differentiated tourism service environment to enhance the image of Busan as an international conference city and an international tourism city.

In line with this, it will introduce city tour buses that provide passengers with ubiquitous experience this year and apply the ubiquitous-exhibition and convention service to BEXCO.

Through the U-Health project, Busan City will help citizens make easy access to medical treatment services by making the best use of U-technology and U-network. It will also simplify the process through integration of medical services and build a regular medical treatment service system, which is linked with health and welfare institutions.

Realizing a healthy city, the government, Busan City and a private consortium will make a joint investment in the remote control medical treatment service and the health monitoring service within this year.

For sustainable health management of chronic patients, it will push for the "home care service for chronic patients" as a private project. For embodiment of U-Health, Busan City plans to develop and introduce a total of nine service models by 2010. Considering population, size and topography, Busan is a very suitable city for pushing for the U-IT project.

Like Singapore and Hong Kong, Busan has a variety of contents foundation necessary for application of advanced IT technology, including the ocean, logistics, tourism, movie, video, exhibition, convention, and transportation.

Another strong point of Busan is the relatively high speed of making an access to super-speed Internet service. Based on this city foundation, Busan City has completed the basic plan for informatization of Busan in 2005 under he basic law to accelerate informatization.

Under the plan, it has been carrying out 74 tasks in the five fields - administrative informatization, life informatization, citybased informatization, industrial informatization and informatization infrastructure - by 2010.

Along with this, it will push for the Busan U-City project as earlier planned by starting the work to offer the U-exhibition and convention service and U-city tour service this year. In 2010 when this plan is finalized, Busan City will become a ubiquitous city one of the first in the world, DG. Jung said. The purpose of the ubiquitous Busan City is to realize Asian Gateway boasting of smooth flow and connection.

To become an Asian Gateway, Busan should be a city where talents and business professionals from all sectors gather, capital investment is actively promoted: where IT, tourism, and culture sectors, and a logistics strongpoint for international trade are being established:, and people can share and utilize information on industries and living.

The U-City strategy is expected to generate a total of 5-8 trillion won worth of direct and indirect addition to the gross regional domestic product (GRDP) and create about 80,000-90,000 jobs, greatly contributing to activate regional economy and city development, he said.

 

The source of news : Korea IT Times  June 1, 2006