Planning and Implementing a Smart City in Taiwan

The emerging smart city concept is a means of utilizing ICT to improve quality of life while optimizing city operations. Many issues are involved, including transportation, energy savings, disaster management, environmental protection, education, healthcare, and security. Currently, the government of Taiwan is cooperating with telephone companies and industries to implement the smart city program. Major telecommunication companies have actively responded to the government strategy and made it a principal of their business development. The program proposed by Chunghwa Telecom aims to assist central and local governments in achieving smart cities by the end of 2017. The program includes the "convenient city," "happy city," and "friendly city," initiatives, which comprise three programs and 12 subprograms. Because of smart cities' diverse demands, a powerful and effective platform is necessary. This article describes a cloud virtualization resource management system called CHT Virtuoso. Based on an open source virtualization solution, it is a cost-effective and well-designed system that fully utilizes the characteristics of cloud computing.