With the outbreak of the Corona epidemic, the precautionary measures required social distancing and more reliance on technology to end transactions between humans, which made the governments of countries accelerate their aggressive steps towards establishing smart cities, relying on artificial intelligence in management, which reduces traffic jams, reduces crime and reduces accidents as well about the economic benefits. Perhaps this is what Egypt has noticed as it builds its new administrative capital, which relies on technology for almost everything.
In China, global consulting firms expected spending on smart city initiatives to reach $38.92 billion by 2023, including energy projects, resilient infrastructure, data-based public safety, and smart transportation, and IDC predicted that global investment related to smart city technology would reach It also reached $189.46 billion in the same year. China attaches great importance to building smart cities, and makes great efforts to support the development of the Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. Since the establishment of the first batch of pilot smart cities in early 2013, China has built a total of 500 smart cities.
On August 19, the Fifth Silk Road Conference was held via the Internet on the sidelines of the China and Arab Countries Exhibition, in Yinchuan City, Ningxia, northwest China. Which has played an active role in promoting exchanges and cooperation between China and countries and regions along the "Belt and Road" in the Internet field, especially the Arab countries. In recent years, Yinchuan City has focused on data as the key element, vigorously promoted smart city building and digital economy development, and established a number of digital and smart scenes such as “City Brain” which is the smart city operation management command center, and also the smart city portal which is “I Yinchuan” and complexes Smart. By the end of 2020, the scale of the digital economy accounted for more than 30% of GDP.
The city of Yinchuan, which was modest years ago, is currently leading the race to use technology to improve daily life, and has become at the top of smart cities in China. In the event of identifying the features of a criminal, and in smart residential communities, garbage bins operate on solar energy, and they automatically open as soon as they feel someone approaching them, and alert the cleaning company to empty them as soon as they reach their maximum capacity.
Shared bikes also work in conjunction with smart traffic lights, so that the bike stops and shuts itself down if it goes other than the designated roads or crosses the red light, and those same bikes are powered by electric power that is self-generated once their wheels are spinning.
Health aspects are also taken into account there, for example, people with chronic diseases can monitor their health status from a smart watch linked to a mobile application, which measures 22 different health factors, ranging from body temperature and heart rate to blood sugar level and bone density, and through the smartphone sends The results are for a specialized center where information is monitored by specialists.
At a fast pace, the city is moving towards more development and digitization, for example, in the five-storey building of government departments in the city, citizens can, starting in 2015, complete all official transactions in record time, facilitating the task of about 14,000 citizens who visit the building daily to renew Passports, personal identification cards, or even obtaining a license to open a pharmacy, restaurant or any other commercial activity, as 30 departments in the building provide more than 400 services and administrative transactions.
The central government in Beijing has placed Yinchuan on top of China’s smart cities. Successive innovations have changed the lives of residents. For example, the behavior of motorists and public transport bus drivers has improved due to fines imposed on them if they do not abide by traffic laws, which include wearing a mask, wearing a seat belt, and not walking in other than designated lanes.
China's policy towards transforming its cities into smart cities accelerated after the outbreak of the epidemic. The closure imposed in some cities forced the government to rely on smart solutions, and opened the door to young innovators by presenting unconventional ideas, turning them into a smart country, even if a new epidemic hit the country. , Life continues through smart applications through which residents practice their normal lives, and with this solution the wheel of production can continue to spin through those applications that companies are designing now.
According to the plan published by the "Voice of China" website, national companies are now preparing to develop a set of products, platforms and services with advanced technology, high performance and proven effectiveness in the field of epidemic prevention and control, not only in the medical field, but in all areas of life, and the plan aims to raise the efficiency of the state. And enhancing and facilitating services, as China will include in the future offices and virtual schools, that is, it will resemble what we see in science fiction films.
The most prominent features of the "Smart China" scheme, and Yinchuan City will have the lion's share in it, includes reliance on smart technologies for measuring body temperature, through infrared imaging, and supports Internet of things and big data applications to ensure that information is recorded and provided to the relevant authorities, and audit technology is also expected to be adopted. And medical advice by developing a “diagnostic assistant” system that can record patient information and health status through voice assistant technology, and artificial intelligence applications will have a great task to determine the patient’s condition, providing a preliminary diagnosis of the condition and alerting doctors, with an error rate of less than 5%, with the ability to improve Diagnostic accuracy through machine learning.
The Ningxia Regional Government is developing a "digital office" system through cloud computing, artificial intelligence, facial recognition and big data analysis to enhance the effectiveness of individual work and teamwork. In the same context, virtual reality technology will be used to hold meetings, display production lines and related data, and develop an online contract signing system.
The express delivery sector is on the verge of witnessing a new shift as well, by implementing a system of self-driving vehicles, to solve the problem of direct contact between humans during the period of epidemic prevention, ensuring the continuation of work and production and thus facilitating the daily life of citizens. The plan also includes a smart system that relies on On applications of big data and artificial intelligence to record the data of those in high-traffic public places. As for schools, it will be dominated by the fifth generation network, cloud computing, facial recognition technology and live broadcasting, with the aim of building an online educational platform.
The Fifth Silk Road Online Conference, Yinchuan City, Smart China Plan