(Yicai Global) Sept. 19 -- Alibaba Group's Holding's cloud unit has upgraded the smart urban management system in its home city of Hangzhou in eastern China's Zhejiang province to provide support to police and firefighters.

Alibaba Cloud Computing, also known as AliCloud, unveiled version 2.0 of ET City Brain at the company's Computing Conference 2018 held in Hangzhou from today until Sept. 22, signaling the expansion of the system's coverage to 420 square kilometers within the city.

The launch of the upgraded smart city solution that utilizes big data and artificial intelligence follows two years of successful trials. In terms of firefighting, ET City Brain is able to automatically inform the nearest fire station when front-end internet of things monitors detect significant temperature rises or heavy smoke. The system also assists the deployed fire truck by providing live updates on the situation in the form of images, audio, and text.

The use of ET City Brain has also resulted in reduced congestion in the city. As a result, Hangzhou has fallen to 57th place this year in a nationwide ranking of the country's most congested cities down fromfifth placein the space of two years. ET City Brain monitors over 1.1 million vehicles on the streets of Hangzhou in real-time with the help of Hangzhou's traffic cops working from a command center.

First launched in 2017, ET City Brain now covers one-quarter of all intersections across Hangzhou including central areas and two pilot projects in Yuhang district.In addition to the real-time optimization of traffic lights, the platform also provides an active alarm system for traffic accidents in the city. ET City Brain can deploy police to help with congestion, violations, accidents.

Besides transportation and firefighting, the platform has also been applied to many other sectors such as credit reporting, municipal management and tourism.

Editor: William Clegg