Smart City Summit & Expo, Asia’s largest annual smart city tradeshow, will be held at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center in Taipei, Taiwan, March 27 to 30. More than 120 city governors and municipal officials are expected to attend the event. Around 300 delegates and representatives will be brought along to take part in the 2018 edition of Smart City Summit & Expo.

SCSE is a comprehensive business-to-business tradeshow for smart cities industries. This year, the fifth edition of SCSE is expected to host 1,200 buyers from over 50 countries. Compared to last edition, the number of municipal officials and representatives grew by an impressive rate of 120%, while business buyers grew by 18%. The 2018 SCSE features 210 exhibitors, 1,050 booths, as well as 63 forums and panel discussions, representing a 6.67% increase compared to last year.The event is expected to attract some 16,000 conference participants and 30,000 exhibition visitors, including an impressive number of international retailers.

The 2018 edition is characterized this year by the theme of “Building Smart Cities on the IoT”. As cities around the world are aware of the huge potential of the Internet of Things (IoT), building more liveable, sustainable, and more efficient cities by transforming infrastructures with Internet of Things (IoT) solution is becoming a reality.

Jointly organized by Taipei City Government, Taiwan Smart City Solutions Alliance, Taipei Computer Association, with government support from Bureau of Foreign Trade, Ministry of Economic Affairs, the four-day event will feature networking opportunities and educational seminars.

Smart City Summit & Expo intends to elaborate on the same topic as last year to further develop ideas on building smart cities based on the Internet of Things.

4 Major Highlights of Smart City Summit & Expo 2018

1. The exhibition will showcase best innovative practices accelerated through cross-industry and cross-domain collaborations.

• To set up a bigger stage for IoT innovations accelerated by cross-industry and cross-domain collaborations, this year’s exhibition will feature “Smart Healthcare Expo,” “Intelligent Building Expo,” and “Future Education Expo”. The vision is to turn SCSE into Asia’s largest smart city platform.

Smart Healthcare Expo (SHE) will feature:

• Hospital Superintendents Conference: the conference event brings together more than 60 hospital directors from prestigious hospitals to discuss about international cooperation on healthcare services in Asia-Pacific and the experience exchange of smart hospital. Taiwan’s Smart hospital development. The participants will also be attending Declaration on International Cooperation in Smart Hospital.
• Healthcare Interactive Pavilion: experience the interactive technology in healthcare. Healthcare Interactive Pavilion showcases various simulations of Smart Hospital applications, from general wards to operating rooms and Intensive Care Units and across care teams, inviting global suppliers and industry leaders such as Tatung Medical Healthcare Technologies Co., Qisda, Advantech Co., MiTAC Information Technology Corp., ASUS Life Corporation, iMedtac Company Limited to present innovations through hands-on, interactive demo-stations.
• Intelligent Building Expo (IBE) will feature innovative applications which centredaround community centers and smart homes. Asia Pacific Smart City and Intelligent Green Building Forum will feature high-profile keynote speakers travelling from Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, and China.
• Future ED) will showcase applications of digital educational platforms applied in elementary schools as well as a panel discussion with invited speakers, including school staffs, school principals and teachers from Southeast Asian countries.

2. Discover an increased international exchange of new approaches, ideas and insights

This year 12 major cities are going to set up their city pavilions, including Kyoto, Japan; Catalonia, Spain; and cities from the UK, France, Australia, Hungary, Denmark, Israel, Poland, Russia, Mexico, Mongolia. For Taiwan’s key pavilions, county and city governments including Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Hualien and Yilan are setting up their independent pavilions. Taiwan’s Asian Silicon Valley project also invited 7 counties and cities to set up joint theme pavilions, creating a total of 15 highly anticipated theme pavilions for the event. Counties and cities will demonstrate some of the best smart city projects initiated by Taiwanese local governments. Among them, the Taipei City Government will exhibit with a scale of 42 booths as the biggest city vision theme pavilion.

3. A new space for business matching program will be set up

Registered attendees and overseas buyers, distributors, suppliers, manufacturers attending Smart City Summit & Expo 2018 will be able to enjoy the benefits of a new business matching space. The matching area being set up provides a business platform for buyers and sellers to make relevant connections and facilitate meetings, ultimately allowing them to maximize their networking opportunities at the event. Business visitors will have a chance to meet potential business partners from more than 50 countries across the world – from the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, Russia, and many more, in addition to many more signing up for the matching services. The organizers designed the business matching program, made special arrangements, and set up an area for networking, meaning a step toward in creating opportunities for new development and infrastructure in building smart cities.

4. Global Organization of SMARTCITY -GO SMART Pre-launching Ceremony

To promote the exchange of experience in the construction of smart cities in various cities around the world, and experiment with the idea of creating cities as living labs, Taipei City is inviting cities such as New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung, as well as cities of Japan, South Korea, Russia, Australia, UK, France, Greece, the Czech Republic, El Salvador to jointly organize and attend a “Global Organization of SMARTCITY.” -GO SMART initiative Pre-launching Ceremony. The signing event attended by honorable guests will kickstart the initiative. The alliance will be entering into a preparation stage and hope to go into operation by next year before the 2019 edition of SCSE takes place.