As a combined result of population growth, urban sprawl, climate change and ineffective infrastructure, Ho Chi Minh city (HCMC) is now facing significant threats from increasing urban flood events in terms of intensity and frequency. With around 45% of its area being less than a meter above the sea level HCMC, particularly its transport system, is highly exposed to flooding, especially during the annual rainy season. Many urban anti-flood projects as well as solutions for traffic jam have been proposed and implemented in Ho Chi Minh city. However, these projects and solutions are mainly focused on infrastructure development, which requires large funding and time to implement for a long time. Some smart traffic solutions and mobile applications have also been proposed, but so far no project has been carried out in Ho Chi Minh city.
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The Smart Saigon project was built from the idea of information crowsourcing combined with Geographic Information System to process and display social information in real time. Smart Saigon was developed on the CogniCity open source platform of the SMART Infrastructure Facility of the University of Wollongong, Australia. This is a study of the exploitation of information from the social network of related urban infrastructure and the geographical locations.
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The Smart Saigon Project has the full name of "Application of geographic information system and social network in urban transport management under severe weather". led by Dr. Doan Xuan Huy Minh as chairman. The total cost of implementing the project is nearly 600 million VND, fully invested from the scientific research fund of the Institute for Computational Science and Technology.
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In its early stages, Smart Saigon aims to address two urgent issues of the city: flooding and traffic jams. The two social networks chosen for the experiment are Twitter and Facebook.
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Not only on online maps, the project is also aiming to provide in turn flood and traffic jams reports to authorities (for instance, Department of Transport, Traffic Police Office), or the media, to inform the local people and people taking part in traffic, as well as to help people in the area to protect their homes and property. Indirectly, @smartsaigon also helps information of agencies to be used more effectively to improve the resilience of the city and its residents.
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The application of GIS (Geographic Information Systems), if properly interacted with information from social networks, also show great potential not only in urban management but also in promoting ownership of people.
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