China’s Wuxi deepens IoT development to become smart city

Wuxi, a city known for its modern industry in East China's Jiangsu province, is embarking on a wide-scale smart city project encompassing connected vehicle, smart transportation and blockchain related applications.

With the convergence of IoT and new information technology industries, such as cloud computing and big data, Wuxi has developed a series of leading new IoT products and technologies. In 2017, the city's industrial operating income from IoT was 243.7 billion yuan.

Recently a city-level Internet of Vehicle LTE-V2X (vehicle to everything) application was showcased at the World IoT Expo 2018 held at Wuxi. The project is set to cover 211 intersections around Wuxi's urban area, high-speed railway stations, the airport and five viaducts, serving 100,000 vehicles in the city.

The LTE-V2X project is expected to be applied in all areas of Wuxi by 2019, and by 2020, the city will be the first base for the V2X to be rolled out throughout Jiangsu province, according to local newspaper China Daily.

Car makers involved in the project include Audi China, FAW Group, Ford Motor Co, Chang'an Automobile Co, Volvo, Volkswagen and Peugeot Citroen.

Wuxi, home to more than 2,000 IoT companies employing 180,000 employees, has been at the forefront of smart technology applications in China. Wang Jinjian, deputy mayor of Wuxi, said that there are still many challenges waiting to be tackled in the IoT industry and blockchain may serve as a critical tool. “The integrated development of IoT and blockchain is an inexorable trend,” Wang stressed, per the China Daily report.

The integration of blockchain technologies will enable IoT to better fit into other fields and boost data exchange security, according to the China Electronics Standardization Institute, which has just formed a partnership with the Wuxi city to compile regional standards for blockchain and IoT development.

Canada-China IoT and Blockchain Research Institute also launched its first blockchain technical product, CityChain, which is designed to advance credible data exchanges for smart city construction.

SAS to Provide IoT Analytics

SAS Institute is another company that will work with Wuxi on IoT projects. The company is selected as Wuxi High-Tech Zone's strategic IoT analytics partner, and will provide tools for data ingestion, analysis and model development, to obtain meaningful insights from IoT data.

"Smart cities are built on strategic layers of complementary technologies – smart electrical grids that help manage energy use; connected vehicles that keep drivers safe; connected traffic lights and public transportation systems that keep traffic on schedule; and connected buildings that help owners manage temperature, air quality and lighting," said Jason Mann, SAS Vice President of IoT. "The connected devices, citizens and environments generate an enormous volume of diverse data that must be analyzed at the edge to drive accurate, real-time decision making."

SAS and Wuxi will jointly promote big data and IoT technologies for pharmaceutical, manufacturing, utilities and transportation industries.

Zhou Wendong, director of the Wuxi Commission of Economy and Information Technology, said that the IoT has become a new pillar of Wuxi's economic development. In the future, it will continue to drive the innovation of key technologies and business models.

Wuxi has also deepened the blend of IoT and manufacturing networks and focused on organizing 100 companies to conduct an intelligent manufacturing diagnosis system. An innovation has emerged from the Hongshan IoT town. An intelligent solar dustbin can open a door and start deodorization automatically when it receives garbage. Overall, Wuxi has implemented over 300 IoT application-demonstration projects, including 21 nationwide projects.