U-city

The terminology of ubiquitous means computers are everywhere. South Korea promotes their 15 main cities to have the technology such as wireless networking and RFID tags to be a region with ubiquitous information technology. All information system are linked and everything is virtually linked to an information system using technology connection.

I tried to provide some pictures related to u-city that is being promoted in Seoul, the capital of South Korea.

RFID/USN (Radio Frequency Identification and Ubiquitous Sensor Network) is being developed in mostly developed countries, included South Korea to achieve highly quality of citizen social life. The networking of any information technology equipment among personal information privacy is being settled to be the best technology ever in this era.

U-Seoul, as one of the project in South Korea, is intended to link everything due to citizen personal life, especially in the health-care service. The left figure represent the connection to other parties regarding the u-Care services.

Not only developing technology in the health area, the government also enhance the information link between all life aspect such as transportation, business, governance, fun (culture) and the green environment. All the link will connect to personal digital appliances (such as cell-phone, PDA, etc.) as the service to the citizen. Picture below are representing the requirement information content on the cellphone regarding to environment.

South Korea has developed their u-city project before 2000.

- Seoul also has been pushing its own u-city project since 1998 in the western district of Sangam-dong, which is being developed as a research and development hub for the high-tech industry.

- The Busan city government plans to spend between 850-960 billion won to revamp Busan into a futuristic city by 2010.

- Incheon plans to introduce an intelligent transportation system, home networking, tele-medicine, a disaster prevention/management system, and a pollution control system by 2020. Incheon also has been eager to take up the project and is poised to provide a state-of-the-art network environment in New Songdo City, a new international town it is building for completion in 2014.

- Jeju is likely to focus on tourism as it implements its u-city plans. U-traffic, u-museum, u-park and u-coupon are four major targets that the Jeju provincial government wishes to achieve. U-museum will be realized at the Jeju Stones & Cultural Park in northern Jeju. An anti-theft system and a location-based system which keeps track of visitors' whereabouts will be set up within the museum. U-coupon system for collecting admittance fees will also be introduced.

- The Suwon city government aims to introduce an individually-tailored administration system through which different administration sections can share information.
Noteworthy is Suwon's "u-protection" service which manages health conditions of senior citizens, especially those who live alone, using "mobile health-sensor" technologies.
For example, elderly citizens with the Alzheimer's disease will be identified via location-based technologies in cases that they get lost or struck with troubles.

- Korea's leading information-technology companies are set to pull together their respective expertise to transform part of Daejeon, southeast of Seoul, into a futuristic "intelligent" town.
Chief officials from KT Corp., Samsung SDS Co., LG Electronics Inc., and LG CNS signed a memorandum of understanding for collaboration on a "Future-X U (Ubiquitous)-City" project, commenced in 2006.

related source : http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-eastasia.asp?parentid=35548, http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-eastasia.asp?parentid=35971

I hope this idea will generate new idea to develop our beloved country, Indonesia