The strategic development and spatial information applications of smart cities in Taiwan

In recent years, as information technologies have been widely adopted, more countries have focused attention on the intelligentization of cities. In 2012, the United Nations listed “Smart City” as one of the progress indicators of a country. The original development of smart cities emphasized technology-based demands, but gradually promoted people-oriented needs, especially on issues related to living and environment, such as public safety, transportation, environmental sustainability and health care. The most important concern is to provide effective solutions to local problems. Spatial information has become wider and more diversified with the rapid development of high technologies, such as ICT, IoT and big data applications. It plays an important role in the planning of smart cities and smart homeland. Municipal governance such as traffic control, environment monitoring, disaster prevention information is based on geographic information system (GIS). The resources, information and data of cities can be spatially visualized. The spatially visualized information are not only texts and data, but integrated, coherent and spatially effective information which can identify and explore correlation and development trends in urban information. In view of this, the government uses smart homeland as the core to explain development and planning of smart city and smart village, and in consideration of the unique geographical characteristics of Taiwan and the importance of spatial resources management and strategy, promotes development of spatial information technologies and application of the technologies to smart homeland. On the basis of smart homeland concept, this study discusses key points of promotional strategies and action plans of the cities in Taiwan, and from the perspective of spatial information, explores and analyzes how to integrate spatial information technologies into urban governance, disaster prevention traffic and tourism under Taiwan's strategies for smart homeland information development. It can help the county and city governments to propose the smart city development strategies, improve government governance, promote regional economic growth, satisfy people's demands and promote the sustainable development of smart cities.