The city with the most complicated traffic conditions in China is Wuhan. They were looking for a long time for a smart traffic solution because their drivers had to pay a toll but they had to stop their car to do this, causing traffic jams. Now the created a simple and smart system. Where people who pass a tunnel or bridge receive a text message informing them of the toll that has been collected. So the money just goes from their phone. This system improved traffic smoothness by 23 per cent, reduced gas emission by 60 per cent and reduced traffic accidents by 15 per cent.
This system is called the Electronic Toll Collection system and it is one of the most advanced toll collection technologies in the world, placing Wuhan next to Singapore and London as the world’s smartest traffic cities. China wants to be independent from foreign countries for the development of their smart cities, so their system is based on the core electronic component, high-end communication chip and infrastructure software products of the 11th Five-Year Plan and achievements in subjects like “Reference Implementation of Nationalized Middleware & Platforms” and “Products R&D and Industrialization of Integrated Middleware Suite”, achieving breakthroughs in China’s self-owned and high-end middleware.
Middleware is a software that is needed to exchange data and achieve computing between different application systems such as the transportation industry system and banking industry system. So this software connects multiple systems like hardware systems, server systems, application systems and communication systems and the software is just as important as a computer’s operating system.
In 2009, CVIC Software Engineering undertook the two above mentioned middleware subjects. They started working together with famous universities and colleges and scientific institutes and recently, the subjects about middleware were delivered and accepted successfully. Jing Xinhai, Chairman of the Board and CEO if CVIC SE, said that more than 20,000 people were involved in the development process, numerous achievements and wisdoms were needed and more than 10 million words of materials were submitted.
CVIC SE realized that the innovation method that centers on companies cleared the way for a rapid industrialization of technologies. They launched the “Loong Smart Platform”, combining the core technology achievements of the specialized projects with the experience of the company. The platform is a product with powerful productivity and it has been tested in actual practice. After Wuhan’s electronic toll collection system, CVIC SE started carrying out a series of application developments based on the “Loong Smart Platform”, integrating intelligent upgrades on their own service platforms in fields like financing, education and tax.
The “Loong Smart Platform” can provide all-dimension support services to Smart Cities, like adaptation of lower-level technologies and rapid construction of smart applications on the upper level. It can also be extended to future technology development and it can be upgraded online. The configuration and operation of all application modules in the platform, and those that are supported by the platform, can be visually and uniformly supervised by the platform. This guarantees a safe, transparent and continues development of Smart Cities.
Lu Haito, from the Traffic Business Department of CVIC SE, said that the toll collection system of Wuhan appears to be very simple but is in fact really complicated because of the difficult data exchange and systems that are involved. The systems senses, analyses and sorts out more than 160GB of data of at least 400,000 drivers every day. It has to work 24 hours every day and it needs to connect seamlessly with more than 1,000 service points. And it links and communicated with numerous systems including banking, annual ticket, China Mobile, CNC, China Telecom, freeway, traffic administration public security and finance.
Cities are now transforming from digital cities to smart cities. And this transformation is difficult since updating and upgrading new technologies like cloud computing, the internet of things and mobile internet are becoming more complicated. And on the other hand, the systems that already exist are independent from one another, making it hard to systems to communicate with each other. And another important issue of the Smart age is safety. So all these problems and difficulties can be fixed when China manages to achieve their self-owned middleware.
Experts accept that delivering smart traffic is the foundation of construction smart cities since this is probably one of the most difficult applications. Jing Xinhai was also proud to announce that Whuhan’s smart traffic system if more difficult than that of Singapore and London and they are the sole integrators of this project and they developed the entire software all by their selves. He believes that middleware is the fastest-developing product amongst China’s domestic basic software products. The function and supporting capability of China’s middleware can totally match that of similar foreign products.
Global Smart City 