Chinese cities getting smarter

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(Xinhua) 08:29, August 14, 2013

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More Chinese cities have completed work on digital systems and are set for an upgrade toward becoming "smart cities," according to the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation.

Smart cities use the Internet and cloud computing technologies to make infrastructure and services -- which include city administration, education, health care, public safety, transportation and utilities -- more intelligent and efficient.

In 2006, China launched a national initiative to build citywide digital systems and as of June this year nearly 320 prefecture-level and 150 county-level cities had been involved in the digitalization process, the administration said Tuesday in a statement.

Among them, more than 170 prefecture-level and 40 county-level cities have completed digital geo-systems and put them into operation, according to the statement.

Earlier this year, China officially started a pilot program to build data cloud platform in the cities of Taiyuan, Guangzhou, Xuzhou, Linyi, Zhengzhou, Chongqing, Wuhan, Wuxi and Zibo. The platform is intended to aid in the exploration of "smart city" construction and related services.

Li Weisen, deputy head of the administration, said "smart city" technology will be used to tackle traffic jams, health care resource shortages, the uneven distribution of education resources and pollution.

The administration said China's city digitalization and smart city construction efforts over last several years have generated more than 30 billion yuan (4.86 billion U.S. dollars) in terms of output value for the geoinformation service industry.

（Editor：HuangJin、Gao Yinan）