SEOUL, South Korea, Oct. 22, 2020 — The Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement (KAIA) successfully concluded the third annual Smart City International Symposium "Resilience in Smart Cities" held on 14-15 October, with the collaboration with the UK.

Due to the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19, symposium this year was broadcasted live, and the two-day virtual event was attended by over 4,020 viewers with a peak of 605 concurrent viewers.

The symposium started with the opening remarks of Bong-soo Son, the President of KAIA, and Nam-chun Park, the Mayor of Incheon Metropolitan City and Simon Smith, the British Ambassador to South Korea greeted the participants with their congratulatory speech.

In the first day of the symposium, Mayor of Bristol City Marvin Rees, provided a keynote speech "Connecting Bristol : our Smart City Approach" to share vision and technologies of Bristol Smart City and lessons learned from their experiences.

At the following ‘Talk Concert’ coordinated by Managing Director of KAIA Sang-hoon Lee, the Chief Advisor of Korean Smart City Special Committee Kab-sung Kim said, "Cooperation between citizens, private and public sector is the most important element in Smart Cities". 

On the second day of the symposium, four sessions of presentations and discussions by professionals and academics have been prepared: Post Corona, Digital Healthcare, Smart City Data and Smart Mobility.

On "Post Corona" session was moderated by Chief Director Dae-yeon Cho of National Strategic Smart City Program from KAIA.

Mike Short, the Chief Scientific Adviser of Department for International Trade of the UK, presented what steps are expected in the UK in Digital Industries after COVID-19, and Kumardev Chatterjee, the Founder and CEO of Unmanned Life, illustrated 5G autonomy as a service for smart city resilience. Hye-joo Kim, the Vice President of KT presented the role of ICT in overcoming COVID-19, and Professor Jun-seok Hwang of Seoul National University introduced case studies of Korean smart city as innovation system.

This event was hosted by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT), the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT), and Incheon Metropolitan City, organized by the Korea Land, Infrastructure and Transport Promotion Agency (KAIA) and the Incheon Free Economic Zone Authority (IFEZ), and sponsored by the British Embassy Seoul and the UK Ministry for International Trade (DIT).

All past sessions and events are available to view through Youtube Channel (www.youtube.com/c/KAIASmartcities).