Sarnia-Lambton narrowly missed out on being named to the Intelligent Community Forum's Top7 Smart Cities list.
The news follows ICF's conference in Taipei, Taiwan which included a six member local delegation.
Communities are measured on a number of indicators including broadband, knowledge workforce, innovation, digital equality, sustainability, and advocacy.
Sarnia-Lambton Economic Partnership GM George Mallay believes the trip was still worthwhile. He says the county has a lot of things to build on.
"I think we need to continue to increase broadband penetration within our community, and we need to continue to use information technology to improve the delivery of government services," says Mallay. "We need to get more companies using e-commerce, and we need to continue to build out ourselves as a leading bio-hybrid chemistry and energy cluster.
"We do have a lot to celebrate and a lot to build upon from our application and from all the things going on in our community. I think we learn what we can from it, and continue to move forward."
The good news is, Sarnia-Lambton beat out nearly 400 communities to be included in ICF's SMART 21 communities for a second straight year.
While in Taiwan, the Sarnia-Lambton delegation was given the opportunity to visit various smart community business and municipal sites, connect with research and development organizations, identify prospects for export and partnership agreements, and visit start-up tech centres.
The Top7 list includes two cities in Taiwan, two in Australia, Moscow, Edmonton, and Grey County, Ontario.
