Council to return to Shenzhen for final assessments as Smart City project comes to an end

DARWIN council will have a chance to see exactly how their Smart Technology works prior to it being fully rolled out, with a final trip to China next month

Darwin deputy mayor Jimmy Bouhoris and Manager of Innovation, Growth and Development Services Josh Sattler at a recent Smart Cities event in Taiwan. Picture: Supplied

Darwin council will have a chance to see exactly how their Smart Technology works prior to it being fully rolled out, with a final trip to China next month.

The trip will cost approximately $23,000 and will see 5-6 representatives return to Shenzhen for a Smart City Forum as well as to return to Guangzhou and Haikou from May 8 to May 17 but still needs to be approved by council at tomorrow night’s meeting.

The forum is expected to attract 300 to 400 global visitors.

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Council will see how it all pans out before it is unrolled, thanks to a second trip to Shenzhen but will use the system to suit Darwin.

“(That’ll be) to dive into their Smart City platform, all their heading information on their tech, where it comes into a platform where they digest the data and then share it with the community,” Mr Sattler said.

“We get to pop the hood and see what their Smart City platform looks like, how they integrate information.”

Mr Sattler said the final trip would allow council to distinguish how Darwin uses the technology in the most suitable way.

“They’re fundamentally all integrated and connected because they’ve got a big population,” he said.

“We want to be connected for efficiency.”

Council will also have a number of visiting delegations with the Taipei deputy mayor indicating his desire to visit Darwin once the system was in place.

“That’s the next step for us, we’ve done a lot of outbound (travel) … but therein lies the next step, with bringing these guys in that we’ve spoken to, to come in and have a look at what we’ve done,” he said.

“We don’t want to get to a point where we flatline, we want to be looking at what we can do next.”

Council first visited the three cities in late November last year.