Big data to expand cradle to grave

More big data technologies will be widely applied, not only to e-commerce business but also to the booming e-governance sector and civil services, benefiting both citizens and governments, experts and company leaders said Thursday as the Big Data Expo trade show prepared to open in Guiyang, Guizhou province.

The show runs Thursday through Sunday.

A huge IT system and a variety of big data technologies are needed to better govern and serve people from cradle to grave, given that as many as 2,500 kinds of civil services are used during an ordinary citizen's life, said Hu Xiaoming, president of Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group Holding.

On Thursday, Alibaba Cloud announced it would jointly launch a block data center and a cloud platform project with the Guiyang Municipal Public Security Bureau, offering more robust computing power and smarter artificial intelligence algorithms.

Block data, a kind of big data concept, refers to the aggregation of data from a particular region. With the help of the new block chain project, the bureau will collect all the data related to social security services, allowing faster response times.

"The power of big data will enable us take full advantage of various data as key resources to reduce costs and improve work efficiency," Hu added.

The recent deal is only a small part of Alibaba's ambitious blueprint to develop cloud storage, enabling local governments to better collect and analyze data and thus optimize its civil services, including urban traffic.

With the help of the cloud computing platform and AI technologies, vehicles with fake licenses will be automatically identified, according to the Guiyang Municipal Public Security Bureau.

"For us, big data has become a powerful weapon against criminals," said Yu Yang, executive deputy director of the public security bureau. "With the use of big data analysis, the crime of burglary and robbery dropped 5.99 percent in Guiyang last year, compared with 2015."

As far back as 2014, Alibaba had signed deals with Guizhou, and 612 application systems of different administration branches have been successfully tested on the cloud platform.

Contact the writers at ouyangshijia@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 05/26/2017 page1)