Hangzhou growing 'smarter' thanks to AI technology

Speakers: Li Ningjing, Sam Duckett and Lu Sirui

[Photo: from VCG]

The city of Hangzhou's traffic efficiency has seen substantial improvements a year after it introduced its "City Brain" project, with an artificial intelligence (AI) hub that uses big data to help it "think" and make decisions better.

The program started in October 2016 with a vision of building Hangzhou into a smart city with the ability to regulate itself and interact better with its human occupants.

Hangzhou is the capital of east China's Zhejiang province and the first city in the world to manage its public affairs with AI technology assistance.

Some of the latest beneficiaries of the program are the local traffic police, since the "City Brain" has started helping them maintain traffic and respond quicker to traffic accidents.

The AI hub offers real-time analysis and deployment advice for smooth traffic flows in an area with more than nine million residents, and manages traffic lights at 128 intersections, saving 15.3% in waiting time at pilot areas. And the City Brain controls traffic lights automatically at more than 100 intersections, cutting travel time on elevated highways by 4.6 minutes.

The system has reported more than 500 traffic accidents in the downtown area daily, with an accuracy of 92%, greatly improving traffic police's efficiency.

In Xiaoshan District, an ambulance used only half the time that it used before to arrive on the scene because of the smart traffic light control technology.

The traffic control is just the first step in City Brain governance, said Wang Jian, chairman of the Alibaba Group's Technology Steering Committee, one of the project developers.

In the future, the City Brain will become an important part of the infrastructure to drive the city towards sustainable development, based on Internet, computing and data.

[The audio clip is from Studio+, produced by CRI. ]