High tech makes smarter urban management a reality

New technologies have made smarter urban management a reality in Shanghai, including tracking wrong disposal of mixed trash, spotting illegal structures and discovering the use of used oil, officials said at the 8th Urban Management Forum.

Focusing on the theme of "Urban Management and Intelligence," government officials and enterprise representatives discussed new paths of urban governance with a digital approach at the forum hosted by the Shanghai Urban Management and Law Enforcement Research Association on Friday in Jing'an District.

"A wet waste collection vehicle is spotted having both dry and wet trash, which has occurred 19 times in two weeks..." This was an alarm sent from the Shanghai comprehensive waste sorting supervision platform, and the vehicle's licence plate number, location and time of occurrence and photos were immediately sent to relevant sanitation management departments.

Officials traced back to the subdistrict the vehicle served based on the information, carried out a special inspection at the relevant residential complexes, guiding the communities to strengthen waste sorting.

It is a portrayal of "digital plus" empowering urban life waste sorting in the city.

"Relying on artificial intelligence and leveraging the existing weighing equipment of the city's wet waste transfer and disposal facilities, and real-time connection with the identity recognition equipment at the front of the vehicle, we have achieved high-speed, automatic capture, and intelligent recognition of foreign objects such as plastic bottles in the dumped materials," said Zou Qingqing, a staffer with the Shanghai Resource Utilization and Waste Sorting Management Affairs Center.

The system can also automatically calculate the cumulative number of abnormal events for a single vehicle, as well as the proportion of abnormal vehicle trips in each district per day, thus helping officials screen out communities with poor sorting habits and strengthen targeted guidance, Zou said.

In the first half of this year, the city discovered about 900 warning events through the system, according to Zou.

Laser methane detectors, digital drone airports, ecological environment patrol vehicles, intelligent data collection vehicles ... used to be terms from science fiction blockbusters, actually appear in real life.

Shanghai Zongbao Security Service Co, a company specializing in urban management support, is using high technologies to spot gas leaks in time and eliminate safety hazards.

"In the past, checking each household and looking for clues of leaks was the main approach. however, it not only demanded a huge workload but also had low detection efficiency," said Yang Pu, vice general manager of the company.

A laser methane detector was developed, which is mounted on a patrol vehicle and can penetrate obstacles such as glass. Due to its long-distance operation, it can detect gas leaks without entering a room, allowing real-time, accurate, and dynamic sensing of gas leaks.

As of the end of September, 57 first-level intelligent perceptions of gas leaks involving businesses along the streets in the Pudong New Area were spotted thanks to the detector, and 21 cases involving illegal gas-related activities by businesses are under investigation.

The smart urban management model created by the "digital drone airport" is another example. Relying on intelligent image recognition technology, automatic discovery and recognition of illegal activities have become easier and cost less.

"From take-off to the discovery and confirmation of illegal activities, it only takes 15 minutes," Yang said. "Compared with traditional methods, it has the advantages of early discovery and early intervention, greatly improving law enforcement efficiency."