The IOTA Foundation has announced that it has teamed up with Taipei City to help it reach its smart city goals.

The capital of Taiwan is to integrate IOTA’s blockless distributed ledger technology, Tangle, to explore the possibilities of meeting its ‘Smart City Living Lab’ needs through a variety of projects.

The first project will be digital citizen cards with built-in TangleID, preventing them from being tampered with. It’s hoped that this will provide citizens with peace of mind without worrying about identity theft or fraud whether through voting, providing background medical record information, or by using any government-related service. Other areas that are being explored include inter-organisation and inter-city data exchanges, and healthcare.

“With Taipei City always thinking ahead and with IOTA’s technology, this partnership is a strategic move to usher in the era of smart cities to the citizens of Taipei,” said Wei-bin Lee, Commissioner of the Department of Information Technology in the Taipei City Government, in a press release.

A project that is currently underway is Airbox. As a joint effort by Edimax, Realtek, Asus, and Academia Sinica, LASS and Taipei City, they are creating palm-sized air sensors that detect temperature, humidity, light, and pollution. These sensors, installed in citizens homes and 150 Taipei City elementary schools, will collect and share air quality data online, making it one of the most detailed environmental sensor networks in the world.

Last November, it was reported that more than 20 firms had joined the IOTA Foundation’s data marketplace, a new open initiative seeking to create a platform for firms to buy and sell data from sensors and IoT-connected devices. Some of the companies include Microsoft, Bosch, Tine, PwC, Accenture, and Fujitsu.

Now, working with BiiLabs, a startup focused on distributed ledger technology, the data from Airbox will be placed on the Tangle to receive payment in IOTA. Real-time air pollution monitoring will be ensured via IOTA’s technology, which will be used by all the PM2.5 stations in the country.

Lman Chu, Co-Founder of BiiLabs, added that the collaboration between IOTA, BiiLabs, and Taipei City offers exciting possibilities for sustainability, adding:

“There is enormous potential for other opportunities with IOTA’s DLT for the Internet of Things, as well as Smart Cities.”

The IOTA is the first distributed ledger to go beyond the blockchain, enabling it to overcome fees and scaling issues, permitting machines to transact data and money with each other. To date, the IOTA technology has enabled over $10 billion to be transacted and has featured in use cases including electric vehicle charging, parking, transparent value chains, and secure Over-the-Air Updates, to name a few.

Dominik Schiener, co-founder of the IOTA Foundation, said: