At Zhuzhou International Convention and Exhibition Center, visitors understand the application of Beidou technology in smart cities. Photo provided

Audience visit Panasonic's "Future Smart City" model. Photo courtesy

　　Through the continuous and in-depth promotion of smart city construction and the accelerated empowerment of a number of new technologies, China is actively creating an "upgraded version" of smart cities. From the construction of various independent "point" information systems, to the provision of "line" digital applications and services by various departments according to their management functions, and then to the gradual exploration and promotion of cross-departmental, cross-business, and cross-system "surface" integrated applications, the construction of smart cities in China has achieved rapid development in the exploration and practice of various places.

　　Reporters learned through interviews and research that the basic elements of smart city construction, such as data, AI, and 5G, are endowing China's cities with more "intelligent" features through the development of technology and the implementation of diverse application scenarios.

　　Multiple elements endow the new momentum for smart city construction

　　In recent years, the investment scale of smart city construction in China has been expanding. According to the forecast of IDC, in 2023, the investment scale of China's smart city ICT (Information and Communication Technology) market will exceed 870 billion yuan, and by 2027, the investment scale of China's smart city ICT market will exceed 1.1 trillion yuan. China's various regions are actively carrying out smart city practice and exploration.

　　The "Overall Plan for the Construction of a Digital China" clearly states that the major veins of the digital infrastructure should be connected. This provides a strong support for the digital transformation of urban governance. Data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that as of the end of May this year, China has built a total of 3.837 million 5G base stations, accounting for more than 60% of the total number of 5G base stations in the world. The scope of internet applications is expanding, IPv6 resource supply is abundant, and the scale of the computing power infrastructure has reached the forefront of the world.

　　The all-round layout of these new basic elements and the integration of new technologies have provided new impetus for urban governance and smart city construction in China.

　　Yu Xiaohui, president of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said 5G has permeated most of China's national economy and industry sectors to improve production efficiency. "It is predicted that China will further amplify the empowering effect of 5G on all fields of society and economy. The combination of 5G with technologies such as artificial intelligence will also grow into a new growth curve," Yu said.

　　Supporting online Q&A, real-time processing of a large amount of environmental data, predicting traffic flow at different times... From the key application scenarios of our country's urban construction, large models have the technical advantages of rapid and accurate identification, logical reasoning and prediction judgment, and have been integrated into various fields of application such as urban grassroots governance, public security, and traffic management.

　　Chen Fengxian, a senior analyst at the Institute of Strategic Development of China Telecom Research Institute, said that the service hotline platform built on the basis of large models has significantly improved the timeliness of the public's consultation services, greatly shortened the online queuing time, and increased the service efficiency by 30%.

　　"Beidou + 5G integration" is becoming a new hot spot in the current smart city construction, and the low-altitude economy is regarded as the "new infrastructure" of smart cities.

　　Hu Wenhu, Vice President of Beijing Digital Zhengtong Technology Co., Ltd., stated that the "Beidou + Low-altitude Urban Governance" industry, represented by commercial satellites and unmanned aerial vehicle systems, expands the form of urban governance to a three-dimensional level, with broad application scenarios. He gave an example, saying that the company's urban low-altitude service platform, with the urban Beidou time and space information as the foundation, integrates the integrated sensor of the air, sky, and earth, and collects data from the entire urban area, pushing the patrol information to various urban management departments, such as exposed garbage, construction waste, illegal buildings, river pollution, etc.

　　Academician Zhou Chenghu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences believes that future cities will take Beidou as the core, arrange low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle networks in the low-altitude field, build a comprehensive operation system, and manage the real physical space through digital space scenarios.

　　The number of Internet of Things devices exceeds 590,000, providing a "digital archive" of the city's past, present, and future, road information is collected in real-time around the clock, enabling the interconnection of vehicles equipped with on-board devices and the road system... Today, the smart city construction in Xiong'an New District has a rich application scenario. Hu Jing, the person in charge of the Xiong'an project group of the Ministry of Science and Technology's Internet of Things and Smart City Special Project, introduced that the digital identification system covering the whole area of Xiong'an New District has realized the unified access, centralized management, remote control, and data sharing of the perception equipment throughout the new district, and the urban information management hub built has broken the data boundaries, achieving the comprehensive integration of data and information from different fields, forming the "three cities": the above-ground Xiong'an, the underground Xiong'an, and the cloud-based Xiong'an.

　　Cai Jianbin, executive vice president of Tianmei Holdings, said, "We want to build the intelligent agent of smart cities, which can actively sense, discover, think, and assist managers in making decisions, forming a closed loop of smart governance."

　　Many industry experts believe that China's urban digital transformation has now moved beyond the stages of electronic and datafication, and has now entered the stage of full-domain intelligence. Taking the large model of artificial intelligence as an example, it has become a key technology to promote the innovation of urban governance concepts, means and models, and is profoundly changing the paradigm of urban governance, promoting urban governance towards refinement and intelligence.

　　Multiple factors "handcuff" the development of smart cities

　　Against the backdrop of the superposition and upgrading of new technologies and new applications, the pace of smart city construction in China has accelerated, but it still faces many challenges.

　　Data sharing is difficult, and the phenomenon of data islands still exists. Li Li, president of the Beijing Association for the Application of Intelligent Technology of the Internet of Things and a specially-appointed professor at the National Information Center, said that the current problem of poor data sharing channels is becoming increasingly prominent, becoming a "data shackles" for the construction of smart cities.

　　Gong Zhe believes that "data islands" can lead to "business islands". In the past decade or so, the construction of smart cities has focused on establishing urban operation smart centers, but when real major emergency safety accidents occur, cities are prone to semi-paralytic state, the core of the problem is that the business of various departments is not truly data-centered, and a unified leadership and command business coordination system has not been formed.

　　The lack of unified technical standards and specifications has also brought many uncertainties to the construction of smart cities. Li Li believes that smart cities involve multiple fields and technologies. Without unified technical standards and specifications, different cities adopt different technologies and products in the process of smart city construction, which lack interoperability, making it difficult for cities to cooperate and share experience with each other.

　　The synergy of multi-party construction also needs to be improved. Several industry experts said that the construction of new smart cities in China still mainly relies on government-led construction, and has not yet formed a situation where government, enterprises and the public build and govern together. This not only increases the financial pressure of all levels of government, but also limits the exertion of the technical advantages of enterprises, and at the same time causes problems such as insufficient public experience.

　　In addition, there are also hidden dangers in data security. The construction and development and utilization of data centers are inseparable from the construction of smart cities. Li Li said that China's information security protection is not yet mature, the ability to develop core technologies is insufficient, the lack of security experience and the vulnerabilities of security systems will also increase the vulnerability of the operation and management of smart cities, and even pose a threat to national information security.

　　Beijing Jiaotong University's doctoral supervisor Ren Shuang said that the main data security risks currently include data leakage, data tampering, data pollution, data loss, etc., which leads some enterprises to dare not fully commit due to concerns about data on their own servers.

　　Qian向东, chairman of Qianxin Group, said that network security is the lifeline of cities. At present, the basic energy, transportation, government affairs, medical and other public services of cities are integrated with digital technology, which means that there are many vulnerable points in smart cities compared with traditional cities. "The more frequent the circulation of city data, the higher the dependence on information security. Once it is attacked by the Internet, it will lead to a variety of problems, such as abnormal operation of the city."

　　Multi-dimensional efforts to accelerate the development of smart cities

　　The industry widely believes that the future of smart cities and urban governance will move towards an active discovery and human-machine collaborative service model, and through the innovation and iteration of new technologies, more development possibilities will be created. In terms of how to accelerate the pace towards a smart future, many industry experts suggest that investment should be increased from multiple dimensions, such as the secure circulation of basic elements such as data, the construction of digital infrastructure, and the innovation of digital systems, to open more "green lights" for the construction of smart cities.

　　Firstly, break through the data barriers to truly achieve the smooth flow of data. Gong Zhe believes that in the new smart city architecture system, the data element scenario application should be re-built, and the urban management departments should use a common business middle platform in future scenario applications to ensure that data truly achieves inter-departmental flow and interaction, and then promotes the intelligent application of the city.

　　Several interviewees from the industry expressed that the circulation and sharing of data require a trustworthy circulation system, and it is necessary to build infrastructure such as a trustworthy data space and a "data security house". At the same time, it is necessary to construct a trustworthy and controllable data circulation method between governments. Relevant technical measures and infrastructure should meet the requirements of trustworthy and controllable. Ren Shuang believes that the ability to identify data security risks should be improved for government, enterprises and other units, and a comprehensive assessment system should be constructed to ensure the security and reliability of data in different forms.

　　Secondly, explore digital governance systems to strengthen urban operation and maintenance innovation. Ren Shuang said that digital governance systems include public data management, regulations and policies for authorized operation, and other aspects of the system, which help to fully realize the normal operation of urban data, especially public data. "In the past, all parts of the country have been committed to building digital and intelligent systems and equipment, but there is a lack of sustainable operation mode. In the future, the data elements of smart city construction will run through the whole chain of urban governance and the whole cycle of urban planning, construction, management and service operation. An urban digital resource operation system should be established to explore the mode innovation of urban operation and maintenance."

　　At the same time, the overall and collaborative nature of the urban smart system should also be brought into play. Several industry experts said that the smart city system involves data integration and development, data communication and utilization, transformation of technical architecture, optimization of management processes and other work. In the past, the construction of smart cities mainly focused on establishing independent systems to achieve local digitalization. At present, it has entered a comprehensive construction stage. The construction of smart cities should pay more attention to cross-departmental, cross-business and cross-system integrated development. In the future, the depth and breadth of smart city construction need to be continuously expanded, and the integrated collaborative development needs to be promoted.