Opinion | To become a smart city, Hong Kong needs more young people to study geography
- Geospatial technology that maps our environment can be used for everything from finding the best route for an ambulance to designing a new MTR line
- It can also help build modern, liveable cities and power a digital economy, but we need people with data analysis skills and geospatial training
Farsightedness is a critical quality for leaders amid fierce global competition. Yet, if we look at education in Hong Kong, the situation is worrying. Elsewhere, cities are moving towards smart development. But what makes a city smart? Massive amounts of data.
That data comes from a variety of connected devices, from smartphones and home appliances to monitoring systems, forming a huge Internet of Things. These devices collect information such as footfall and traffic flows, temperature and humidity, and light levels. Most of the data is location-centric; it tells us things about the sky (atmosphere, satellites), the ground (terrain, buildings, pipes), and the sea (salinity, oxygen levels).
The number of connected devices is growing explosively, with an estimated 46 billion sensors in use worldwide last year, twice as many as in 2016. By 2030, that number could increase to 125 billion.
In the face of such vast amounts of data, we need efficient tools for organising and analysing, so this information can be used to make comprehensive and real-time decisions. A geographic information system (GIS), which combines geospatial information, statistics, algorithms and modelling, is one of the best tools.
