[Smart City Special] Hitting the pain points and accelerating the development of smart cities

In recent years, countries around the world have attached great importance to the development of network information technology and the construction of smart cities. The United States, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the European Union and other countries have successively formulated goals and plans for the construction of smart cities, and increased the research and development of network information technology and the construction of smart city demonstrations. A large number of leading companies related to network information technology have also emerged in Silicon Valley, USA. my country attaches great importance to the construction of smart cities. Since 2012, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments have successively issued relevant documents to guide the development of network information technology and the construction of smart cities, and have established hundreds of smart city construction demonstration projects. In this context, it is necessary to seriously think about how to view and build new smart cities.

Smart city is an upgraded version of digital city and is considered to be an advanced form of future city. Smart city is supported by new generation information technologies such as Internet, cloud computing, Internet of Things, 3S (RS remote sensing, GPS global positioning system, GIS geographic information system), etc., and is committed to the intelligent development of cities, so that cities have the ability of intelligent perception, response and regulation, and realize sustainable development of cities.

The essential characteristic of a smart city is that human wisdom drives urban development. It is generally believed that the development of a smart city needs to go through four stages: digitization, networking, intelligence, and wisdom.

Building a Smart City:

The first stage is to promote digitalization so that the world we live in can be expressed digitally;

The second stage is to connect the digital city components through the Internet to achieve networking, such as e-commerce and e-government;

The third stage is to realize local intelligent response and regulation based on network transmission, that is, the intelligent stage, such as intelligent charging, intelligent transportation, intelligent factory, etc.

The fourth stage is the Internet of Everything stage, where all functions of the city are optimized and operated under the drive of human wisdom, realizing the intelligence of the city and basically building a smart city.

These four stages are not completely separate, and the latter stage should be based on the previous stage.

According to the trend of technological development, the application of the fifth generation of mobile communication technology (5G) will mature around 2020. With the advent of the 5G era, large-capacity, low-latency network transmission will become a reality, humans will enter the era of the Internet of Things where everything is connected, and the construction of smart cities will enter a new stage.

Specifically, the smart city architecture should be supported by network information technology , with three main application areas: smart industry, smart people's livelihood and smart management .

Network information technology Includes sensor technology for data collection, network broadband technology for data transmission, cloud computing technology for data processing, cloud storage technology for data storage, cloud platform technology for data sharing, quantum communication and encryption technology for network information security, etc.

Smart people's livelihood includes smart home, smart health, smart education, smart shopping, smart transportation, smart environmental protection, etc. Most of them involve infrastructure and public services, and belong to the living area of ​​smart cities.

Smart industries include smart agriculture, smart manufacturing, smart buildings, smart logistics, smart business, smart tourism, smart media, smart finance, etc., mainly involving the production field of smart cities.

Smart governance includes smart planning, smart government affairs, smart monitoring, smart decision-making, and smart communities. These are mainly related to urban governance and are the "central nervous system" of smart cities, reflecting the level of development of smart cities.

By evaluating the specific progress of each component based on the smart city framework, we can learn about the development of the smart city, identify the weak links, and increase construction efforts in a targeted manner.

Looking forward to the construction of smart cities in China, it can be said that opportunities are rare and challenges are unprecedented. As for opportunities, the first is the opportunity of combining the rise of high technology with urbanization. China is currently in a stage of rapid urbanization. The rise of a new generation of network information technology has made it possible for us to take the road of new urbanization, build green smart cities, promote the construction of green smart buildings and infrastructure, develop smart public services and smart industries, and achieve green and smart development. The second is the opportunity of smart-driven urban development and transformation and upgrading at the same time. At this stage, China is in a critical period of building a well-off society in an all-round way and moving towards modernization. People's needs are shifting from material hard consumption of "food, clothing, housing and transportation" to spiritual soft consumption of "learning, entertainment, travel and health", and from focusing on "quantity consumption" of goods to focusing on "quality consumption" of goods. The construction of smart cities just meets the needs of this transformation and upgrading.

As for challenges, first, at the technical level, we face difficulties in establishing a city perception system, building a data sharing platform, constructing an application system, and ensuring information security. Second, at the social level, there are a series of challenges in the organic combination of the convenience of smart cities and the privacy of citizens' information, the application of artificial intelligence technology and social ethics, and the network hardware facilities and the humanistic connotation of smart cities. If we can seize the rare opportunity and effectively respond to various challenges, we will usher in an unprecedented new atmosphere for the development of human society.

Realistically speaking, my country's smart city construction started early and has achieved rapid results. A series of achievements have been made in the fields of information collection, network transmission, information processing, information development and application, network information security and other network information technologies, and a number of leading enterprises with strong competitiveness have emerged. Some technologies are still at the international leading level. Among the more than 30 provincial capital cities and above surveyed by the author, most cities have completed the first and second phases of smart city construction, namely digitalization and networking tasks, and some cities have moved towards the intelligent and smart stage.

But it is undeniable that there are many problems in the construction of new smart cities at this stage.

First, they attach great importance to concept hype and neglect the renewal of ideas. Although the concept of smart city has attracted attention from all walks of life and the construction of smart city can be seen in almost all local government work reports, the concept of smart city construction is outdated and the connotation is vague, and even the construction of smart city is equated with urban informatization.

Second, they focus on hardware investment and neglect application development. Local governments usually equate smart city construction with building networks and installing probes, or are keen on building cloud storage and cloud computing centers. They do not pay enough attention to how to promote application software development in a step-by-step manner and do not invest enough.

Third, they focus on data collection but neglect platform construction. Each department in the city often operates independently, making it difficult to build a data sharing platform.

Fourth, we attach great importance to technology research and development, but neglect the humanistic connotation. Smart cities cannot be separated from the support of new generation network information technology. In the initial stage of construction, network infrastructure construction must be carried out first. However, the essence of smart cities is that human wisdom drives urban development. If we leave the connotation of art and humanities and social sciences and simply take the route of technology first, we will definitely miss the point.

Fifth, attach importance to government leadership and despise market forces. Smart city construction is a huge system project with the dual attributes of providing public goods and private goods. In the early stages of construction, government guidance is very necessary, but the government cannot always take on everything. Diversified financing and diversified subject participation should be implemented according to the attributes of the construction projects. The government should be responsible for top-level design, rule-making and project construction in non-market areas. Profitable projects can be constructed by enterprises, and social investment and other models can be adopted to ensure the sustainability of smart city construction.

Sixth, they attach importance to project construction and neglect top-level design. Smart city construction in various places often lacks top-level design and is keen on single project construction, resulting in a lack of organic connection between projects, violating the organic law of smart cities, and showing a tendency towards fragmentation, which reduces the efficiency and benefits of smart city construction.

Only by facing up to bottlenecks can we solve problems; only by identifying pain points can we take targeted actions. Only by figuring out how to view and build new smart cities can we seize opportunities, overcome challenges, and accelerate the construction of new smart cities.