Joe So, chief technology officer of industry solutions at Huawei, has expressed the company’s desire to bring its Smart Cities and Safe City infrastructure to Australia.
The Huawei Smart City infrastructure uses the IoT to sense, analyse and integrate the key information of a city’s core operating systems. It has already been employed in more than 100 cities in more than 30 countries.
The Safe Cities platform uses data, analysis and technology to enable the government to gain a comprehensive view of the city and to build a system for urban public safety. It aims to provide police and emergency services with technology to assist their operations.
“Australia is not facing too many major issues. You are like Canada – you are satisfied with what you have today,” said So.
“However, every Western country is waiting for something bad to happen – then they say ‘I need this’. Just like France and Belgium.”
“Public safety is going to be one of the major issues for Australia because of where you stand in the world, with the position you have with the US.”
The CTO continued to add that issues with data storage and retrieval meant incident data was often too slow to reach command staff, and suggested the creation of a system to link all of the governments and big data together.
This follows the announcement of the Turnbull government’s Smart Cities Plan, which advocates for cities with improved transport, more accessible employment locations and increased digital connectivity. Part of this plan includes providing an initial $50 million of funding to connect long-term infrastructure projects with interested parties in the private sector.
Huawei is already working in Melbourne with South East Water to create technologies that will allow data, analysis and management of sewer networks.