City Brain
Signal 2 | Smart City
In 2017 Alibaba Cloud conference, Alibaba official announced its city brain project in Hangzhou, one of the major cities in China. Dr. Wang Jian, Alibaba’s tech chief, talked about the achievement of City Brain 1.0 which mainly focus on traffic applications. By controlling and dynamically 128 traffic light in Hangzhou, City brain 1.0 was able to achieve:
- Car speed increased 15% during rush hour.
- Drivers spent 10% less time on highways.
- Without passing through the red light, the time which ambulances get to the destination is 50% lower.
Although City Brain 2.0 is still underdeveloped, Dr. Wang Jian’s goal is to remove all the limitation for cars in the city.
This project unfolds the organic part of the city. Previously, city planners mainly use hardware to solve the problems of the city. For example, if there are too many cars, city planner will plan to build more roads to accommodate the traffic. There will be so regulation or policy tools that could be leveraged but city planner often sees the result without exactly knowing what happens between the regulation and final outcomes. City Brain is able to unfold the process and optimize the existing resource in real-time. With the help from AI, city planner finally able to understand the big data generated from the city and leverage it.
Reference
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/alibaba-city-brain-artificial-intelligence-china-kuala-lumpur
