IoT and Smart cities were the topics of discussion in the EU-South Korea webinar organized on April 21, 2021, by ETSI and TTA with the support of the European Commission.
The discussions focused on how Europe and South Korea could further cooperate in addressing the challenges and opportunities of IoT Implementation in Smart Cities. Broadly the session looked at how interoperability, sustainability, scalability, and security of IoT systems and devices is critical to their success and adoption.
Daeyon Cho from the National Strategic Smart City Program provided an overview and a roadmap on how South Korea was approaching the rollout of infrastructure, services and technologies connected with its smart city implementation. Olavi Luotonen from EC's DG CONNECT then provided a European perspective and outlined the areas for cooperation and some of the initiatives the European Commission was supporting.
Privacy and personal data protection-were also a large focus. The session then turned to practical examples of use cases of cities, both in Europe and South Korea. Fragmentation is a reality in global smart city solutions but there is a shared acknowledgement that inter-working mechanisms and closer global cooperation can be embraced to try and reduce fragmentation where possible. Xavier Piednoir from ETSI summarized the importance of future cooperation in giving more visibility to and promoting the work of the communities of experts who are working on the implementation of smart city solutions.