The city of Singapore has been chosen as the Smart City of 2018 at the Smart City Expo World Congress during a gala to reward the most outstanding initiatives and projects in the urban innovation and transformation industry.

The Smart Nation project to transform the Asian city-state into a global benchmark of smart urban solutions through a wide array of solutions - from dynamic public bus routing algorithms to real-time parent-teacher portals, or even predictive analytics for water pipe leaks- has earned the city the title.

The 2018 edition of Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), the smart cities summit organized by Fira de Barcelona, closed its eighth edition after shattering all previous records. During three days the event has brought together over 700 cities from the five continents, 844 exhibitors, over 400 speakers and more than 21,000 attendees, a 17% more than in 2017.

The event has been held together with Iwater, the show on the integrated water cycle, the second Smart Mobility Congress, the Sharing Cities Summit, The C40 Talks, and the Digital Future Society forum organized jointly with the Mobile World Capital Barcelona.

For the event's director, Ugo Valenti, 2018 has, "set new frontiers for Smart City Expo World Congress and because this year we focused on the transformation of current metropolises into more livable environments, the growth experienced encourages us and the urban innovation community too to persevere in this direction."

"It is clearer than ever that it is our responsibility, both individually and collectively, to capitalize on the tools we've seen these days in Barcelona to transform our cities and make them the best possible places for us and the generations to come," Valenti added.

The show gathered some of the leading experts on urban innovation amongst which are Rufus Pollock, economist and founder of Open Knowledge International; Andrew Keen, economist and author of How to fix the Future and Cult of the Amateur; Víctor Pineda, social development scholar and disability rights advocate; and Bangladeshi social entrepreneur, banker and economist Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner. But SCEWC also brought together top companies within industry like Alstom, Bosch, Cellnex, Cisco, Dassault, Deloitte, FCC, Ferrovial, FiWare, Hexagon, Huawei, Indra, Mastercard, McKinsey, Microsoft, Deutsche Telekom, Engie, Mshereib Properties, Nec, Ntt, SAP, Siemens, Suez and Urbaser.