Hangzhou to build 'City Brain' with Alibaba and Foxconn
(
People's Daily Online) 17:43, October 13, 2016
Hangzhou Mayor Zhang Hongming, chairman of Alibaba's Technology Steering CommitteeWang Jian, and founder and CEO of Foxconn Technology Group Terry Gou jointly launchthe Hangzhou City Brain project at the 2016 Computing Conference in Hangzhou, Zhejiangprovince on Oct. 13. (Photo/Alibaba Group)
The Hangzhou government launched a new project, titled "City Brain," with Alibaba Groupand Foxconn Technology Group at the 2016 Computing Conference in Hangzhou, Zhejiangprovince on Oct. 13.
City Brain, an artificial intelligence hub, will use big data to help the city "think" and makedecisions. It aims to build Hangzhou into a smart city with the ability to self-regulate andeven interact with human beings.
"The core of City Brain will use the ET artificial intelligence technology of Ali cloud, whichcan conduct overall real-time analysis of the city, automatically deploy public resourcesand amend defects in urban operations," said Wang Jian, chairman of Alibaba's TechnologySteering Committee.
The first step of the City Brain project is to collect data relating to infrastructure facilitiesincluding transportation, resources and water supply. From there, the partners willintegrate data resources scattered around the city to navigate its "neural network."
Wang Jian, chairman of the Technology Steering Committee of Alibaba Group, introducesthe City Brain project at the 2016 Computing Conference in Hangzhou, Zhejiang provinceon Oct. 13. (Photo/Alibaba Group)
According to Hua Xiansheng, a machine vision scientist at Ali Cloud, City Brain will be theonly artificial intelligence system in the world that can achieve real-time analysis of city-wide videos. The transportation module has already been in use since September onHangzhou's Shixin Road. Test data shows that, through the intelligent regulation of trafficlights, traffic flow on the street has improved 3 to 5 percent on average, and even up to 11percent on some sections of the road.
"It's just the beginning," said Wang. "City Brain is an unprecedented … experiment ofbringing artificial intelligence into city management."
The computing conference, held jointly by Hangzhou city government and Alibaba Group,is the largest domestic summit on cloud computing and big data. Its former name was AliCloud Developers Conference.