Evaluation Index System for Comprehensive Urban Digital Transformation is released on July 4. [Photo by Wu Jiang]

The Global Digital Economy Conference (GDEC) 2025 Internet of Things (IoT) and Smart City Forum was held at the National Information Technology Innovation Park in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (Beijing E-Town) on July 4.

The forum focused on addressing key issues affecting people's livelihoods, promoting the practical implementation of smart city construction, serving the overall national development and improving people's lives through smart city construction. The event aimed to ensure that digital technologies truly benefit people's livelihoods, creating an industry event that gathers cutting-edge ideas, showcases innovative achievements, and promotes industrial cooperation.

At the forum, the Evaluation Index System for Comprehensive Urban Digital Transformation was released. This standard has established a comprehensive evaluation index system for the digital transformation of cities, including three primary indicators of transformation scenarios, transformation support, and transformation ecology, along with 12 secondary indicators and 43 tertiary indicators. It also specifies indicator descriptions, weight distribution, and calculation methods.

The release of this standard has provided an effective tool for evaluating the comprehensive digital transformation of cities, aiming to serve as a reference and guide for advancing the comprehensive digital transformation of cities.

Three specialized committees in the IoT intelligent technology application field were also established on-site. These committees aim to integrate upstream and downstream resources in the industry chain, build a platform for in-depth cooperation between industry, academia, research, and application, promote collaborative innovation in the industry, and create a new ecosystem of industrial development with positive interactions.

Through the exploration of new technology applications and models, these committees will guide the industry towards high-end, intelligent, and green development, reshaping the new landscape of smart city industries.

In addition, the 2025 Outstanding Cases/Achievements of IoT and Smart City were released at the forum. A total of 60 innovative practices and achievements in IoT and smart city field were selected, showcasing the vibrant efforts of Chinese technology companies in driving high-quality urban development through digital technologies.

The forum also invited top experts, scholars, and industry leaders from both domestic and international backgrounds to engage in in-depth analysis, forward-looking discussions, and knowledge sharing on the application trends of cutting-edge technologies such as IoT, artificial intelligence, big data, block chain, and their role in smart city. The topics covered a wide range of core areas in smart city development, focusing on urban planning, construction, governance, security, transportation, law enforcement, public safety, urban civility, and public services - nine key areas in the modernization of urban governance.