Bringing Four Major Smart Fields Together: CTCI Fulfills the New Vision of a "Smart City"

Wu, Kuo-Ann, CEO of CTCI Group Intelligent Solutions Business

In recent years, innovative technologies in telecommunications, artificial intelligence, IoT, and big data, have led to smart applications that have penetrated all aspects of the urban lifestyle. Building "smart cities" has become the priority for governments from all over the world, and the immense business opportunities and development potential derived from these innovative applications have attracted many international companies to join the competition. CTCI Group Intelligent Solutions Business (GISB) has been dedicated to cultivating the smart industry for years. Facing the overwhelming scope of the modern smart city, GISB focuses on four major fields, specifically, smart manufacturing, smart transportation, smart buildings, and smart parks by utilizing its rich experience in turnkey engineering projects and advanced information and communication technology (ICT). The Group provides a variety of smart applications and solutions through its self-developed Intelligent Solution Platform (iSP) to create a blueprint for developing smart cities and realizing its vision of becoming a "top-notch smart solution and service provider."

There are more than 1,000 smart cities in the world that have been launched or are currently under construction. In fact, many cities in Taiwan have been selected as the best smart cities worldwide by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF). As with urban development, smart cities cover a wide range of areas from public works and infrastructure such as roads, transportation, and construction to software for large-scale information transmissions, big data analysis, and the subsequent integration and monitoring systems. CTCI is one of a few companies with broad professional and executive experience that specializes in all of these fields. The complementary characteristics of our three companies under GISB, including CTCI REI, CTCI SEC, and CTCI ASI, allow us to collaborate in the development and layout of a smart city by leveraging technological advantages in geotechnical engineering, building structure, electromechanical air-conditioning, industrial automation, and electromechanical control system integration. The process begins with information collected by CTCI ASI being sent to the cloud where experts from these three companies conduct big data analysis and forecasting to design and provide smart solutions and services. This quickly optimizes synergy and achieves results in the four major areas including smart manufacturing, smart transportation, smart buildings, and smart parks.

Smart Manufacturing: Data Visualization Makes Management Easier

Taiwan is a manufacturing powerhouse. The ability to equip traditional or low-efficiency factories with smart thinking capacity is a tremendous opportunity for Taiwanese industries to stand out. CTCI GISB has diverse experience in implementing automation and smart applications and the group has been providing customized services to promote smart plants since 2011. From process optimization to reliable facilities, energy saving, and work safety incident responses, the group has successfully assisted domestic petrochemical, electronics, MRT, aviation, and other industries to achieve smart transformation and enhance competitiveness.

In addition to upgrading the facilities and performance, the group has translated manufacturing data into visualized management data through the data integration platform. This allows managers to clearly understand manufacturing data for the entire industry chain including production, safety, maintenance, training, and management in a single platform. This makes it easy to simultaneously manage manpower, materials, and financial resources, hence facilitating timely and precise decision-making to achieve smart operations, effective management, and optimize facilities, storage, and transportation. 

Smart Transportation: Smart Airport Solution with iAirport

Using technology to improve traffic congestion is an important part of smart city development. In the field of smart transportation, CTCI GISB has successively acquired a number of transport and communication projects for the first, second, and third terminals of Taoyuan Airport to assist Taoyuan Airport in its transformation into a smart airport.

The trends for international airports indicate a preference away from building big new airports. Instead, advanced facilities and equipment are adapted to optimize the operations of current airports to increase the volume and efficiency of transportation. This is where professional savoir-faire and advantages of CTCI GISB lay. In response to the government's investment to upgrade the first and second terminals and the construction of the third terminal, the group will use existing performance and momentum to provide an advanced data exchange platform for the Taoyuan Airport. The platform seamlessly integrates and connects operation management, baggage handling, passenger service, tower automation, land side system/communication, airside communication, and other systems. The iAirport solution is expected to provide all services necessary for the smart transformation of Taoyuan Airport enabling it to become the hub for East Asia air traffic and a benchmark airport to be emulated elsewhere in Asia.

In addition to providing advanced data exchange platforms and integrated terminal information, we are developing systems to handle building management systems, air traffic operation status maps, self-service customs clearance systems, passenger navigation apps, and passenger tracking systems. These systems will collect more big data for applications, which will extend and expand service areas for data exchange platforms. These systems can also be applied to aerospace engineering, rail transit electromechanical systems, technological plants, smart plants, and smart parks to provide more diverse services.

Smart Buildings: Buildings that Enable People to Interact with their Environment and Facilities

The topic of "smart buildings" covers a wide range of concepts including smart buildings, shopping malls, and various high-tech factories. According to Zion Market Research, the global smart building market will reach US$61.9 billion by 2024, with a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 34.7% for the period between 2016 to 2024. According to Taiwan's government policy, new public buildings that cost more than NT$200 million are required to obtain a smart building mark above the qualified level. In other words, the future market development potential of smart buildings is tremendous.

In the high-tech factory business, we have implemented the SDP Array Cleanroom Project of SAKAI SIO International GuangZhou Co., LTD in China that includes the front-end engineering design (FEED). In addition to increasing the participation of FEED and enhancing the EPC turnkey capacity, we will join forces with overseas subsidiaries to win local high-tech factory projects in the future. 

In terms of smart buildings, CTCI has started building its second headquarters building that is scheduled to be completed in 2021. This building will be a smart building that encourages people to interact with their environment and  the facilities through new technologies such as the Internet of Things. In this building, we will introduce and integrate the Group's three smart solutions, including CTCI's iSP, CTCI SEC's smart maintenance system - BIM (Building Information Modeling) 7D, and CTCI ASI's energy management system - Mr. Energy. These systems together will allow smart monitoring and applications for air conditioning, lighting, security, energy management, maintenance transportation, and elevators among other building functions. The monitoring system with smart security is equipped with features such as the detection of faces, license plates, and unattended belongings in the lobby while the virtual fence around the building further enhances security in coordination with the security system.

In addition, as ECOVE will be based in the second HQ building, the data of its incineration plants operating domestic and abroad will be transmitted to the data integration platform through the cloud for visualization, allowing managers to stay updated about the operations of each incineration plant (Energy-from-Waste plant) in the office. In the future, we will continue to monitor new technologies and equipment in the marketplace to effectively integrate these new ideas with iSP to differentiate ourselves from our competitors and continue to be an industry leader.

Smart Parks: Enhanced Smart Integration for Total Solutions

Smart Parks belong in smart cities. These parks employs various applications including multi-functional road lighting, human flow analysis, security control, robot and drone applications, air quality analysis and applications, renewable energy and storage. Many of the 62 industrial parks in Taiwan are outdated. The government has begun to strengthen and improve mechanisms to increase competitiveness and attract the backflow of Taiwanese businesses. CTCI GISB has obtained multiple city redistribution and industrial park planning projects through its expertise in professional services such as civil engineering, structure, geotechnical engineering, electromechanical engineering supervision and design, combined with multimedia application technologies such as 3D GIS (Geographic Information System), BIM platform, and animation display.

To win more smart park design planning and engineering turnkey projects, GISB will continue to strengthen the basic planning capabilities of science parks and industrial parks, as well as integrate digital signage technology to engineering design and construction. This includes introducing digital terrain measurements and BIM to the design, developing e-piping management systems, query systems for instant design inspection and construction information, as well as enhancing multimedia animation display capabilities. Moreover, the integration and development of applications such as green buildings and roads, smart lighting control, smart energy, park security monitoring will provide old parks with smart total solutions covering environmental protection, energy savings, and carbon reduction, which is our biggest advantage in the development of smart parks.

"IDT + iSP" Smart Industry Implementation

All smart applications are part of the "smart city" implementation and are critical to the success of smart city development. The essence of being "smart" is to "optimize" and "predict," which is directly related to accumulation, analysis, and visualization of data. "IDT + iSP" is an important tool for CTCI's practice of intelligentizing the industry and building a smart city to achieve our vision of being a "top-notch smart solution and service provider."

The IDT Intelligent Development Team consists of GISB teams such as IIOT Industrial Internet of Things, Cloud, LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network), BIM, and API (Application Interface). The team is responsible for staying abreast of the latest smart products in the marketplace, supporting project execution and business development, and connecting iSP to respond to the rapid development of the smart industry. The iSP developed by CTCI's Research & Innovation Center is our core asset to expand the development of the smart industry. In addition to the needs of IDT, we will organize and analyze information and systems obtained from the outside world to develop various smart applications and solutions. Through this platform, we can integrate smart solutions, provide standardized and reproducible solutions and platform services to industries and customers, and achieve the development goals of turning smart services into smart industries.

For future smart city development, GISB will continue to conduct cross- business group and cross-company cooperation to strengthen its core technology research and development to produce greater synergy. Moreover, it will maximize industry wisdom through cooperation, alliances, and expansion of service areas with key partners, as well as strengthening the supply chain to jointly create new opportunities for smart city development.