In August 2018, Loqiva was given an exclusive tour of the Longang Intelligent Operation Center (IOC), the centrepiece of Huawei’s city demonstrator just outside Shenzhen.

Longgang  has a population of more than 1.8 million in an area of almost 683 square kilometres (approx 263 square miles). Huawei and Longgang council have partnered to develop smart solutions for city events, emergencies, security, transportation and other services.

The IOC makes use of an Integrated Communications Platform bringing together big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to provide insights.

Huawei likens smart cities to living organisms which are powered by nervous systems.  A smart city needs a brain (the control centre) and peripheral nerves (sensors, cameras etc). The nerves gather realtime information about the status of the city which enables the brain to analyse the data and make informed decisions.

Longgong has taken more than 5 years of work and has delivered an impressive fusion of management data, IoT technology and data visualisation. The level of insights Huawei has already achieved across all major city verticals in Longgang offers a huge amount of scope for citizen engagement.

Administrative services are already being streamlined through their gateway architecture as the video below shows:

Our tour with Huawei was organised by Future Cities Catapult as part of the China Business Portfolio launch.