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The aim of smart transportation is to improve convenience — in the hope that we can achieve safe, efficient, as well as enjoyable travel — and ensure smooth logistics.
While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to limit passengers' ability to travel worldwide, logistics is playing an increasingly important role in efficiently providing medical supplies and other essential resources.
The pandemic is now largely under control in China, where businesses and public mobility requirements are returning to normal. However, China still needs to tackle the long-standing challenges of crowded airports, metro, and railway stations, as well as traffic congestion on urban roads.
To address these difficulties, Huawei has facilitated the digital transformation of transportation with its "Five Ones" solutions: One ID for passengers, One Order for logistics, One Brain for operations, One Cloud for computing, and One Network for connectivity.
With the seamless transmission of passenger data between systems such as the Departure Control System (DCS) and security check system, the solution reduces passenger wait times from 40 to 25 minutes and greatly improves the passenger experience by offering more personalized services. For example, the FR-based smart Flight Information Display Screen (FIDS) can detect and identify individual passengers then automatically display only the relevant flight information. Using this system, passengers no longer need to spend time searching for their flights, scanning the departures board.
Huawei has also implemented digital transformation in its CBG logistics park. This presented multiple challenges, including shortening outbound time of online orders, using Wi-Fi to connect Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) for automatic warehousing, as well as replacing manual operations with CCTV and Artificial Intelligence (AI), to achieve real-time monitoring and management of loading and unloading areas. The most pressing, however, was coordinating thousands of automatic devices and check nodes on logistics links, while simultaneously processing numerous online orders. Huawei deployed an Internet of Things (IoT) platform to tackle these problems. The platform collects the data from sensors, devices, and systems to build a unified data lake, to coordinate all links and devices more efficiently. It takes less than an hour from receiving an online order to the goods being sent out, with a maximum of 58,000 parcels delivered every day.
These examples illustrate how operation data flows increase passenger flow and logistics efficiency, as well as create a better experience. Communications drives data interaction in the digital world, while transportation enables mobility in the physical world. Huawei's exploration of digital transformation in the transportation industry focuses on better integrating and enabling interactions between the two worlds — helping transportation customers improve safety, efficiency, and the passenger experience.
Huawei's "Five Ones" solutions represent the company's efforts in promoting digital transformation, aiming to bring digital capabilities to every journey. The One ID solution is oriented toward passengers, and can be replicated across airports, metro and railway stations, and other travel scenarios, enabling FR-based convenient access.
One Order solution for the logistics industry provides a unified ID for each order, whether the goods are transported by sea, land, or air, achieving End-to-End (E2E) logistics visualization and management. These two solutions are based on One Brain for operations management, One Cloud that provides a digital platform, and One Network that implements full connectivity.
We can also integrate various means of public transportation within a city into the comprehensive transportation Operation Control Center (OCC), which collects the status and usage of aircraft, ships, high-speed trains, metros, buses, and taxis, as well as passenger flows, to enable collaboration across transportation means and improve the E2E passenger mobility experience.
A rainstorm in Shenzhen, for example, will cause traffic congestion on urban roads, resulting in increased metro use. In this case, the comprehensive transportation OCC can perform big data analytics based on historical and real-time data, and predict passenger flows in each metro station every 15, 30, or 60 minutes. Accordingly, the OCC can dynamically adjust metro departure intervals to help quickly clear crowded areas and avoid congestion. The comprehensive transportation OCC can similarly be applied to traffic law enforcement, the coordination of connections and transfers for commuters, urban planning decision-making, effective emergency handling, and the oversight of public transport during major events.
Elsewhere, an airport Intelligent Operation Center (IOC) performs routine airport operations management based on One Brain. This IOC integrates people, cargo, and information flows on one panoramic map, and streamlines, shares, and displays airport resource data, such as airside stands and ground handling vehicles, landside check-in counters and security checkpoints, and additional data from all airport subsystems. It allows the airport to better coordinate resources, for example, implementing AI-based automatic stand allocation, in order to shorten aircraft turnaround time, optimize flight schedules, and increase operational efficiency.
In the metro industry, Huawei deploys the cloud, big data, video, AI, and other technologies to develop the Urban Rail IOC Solution for urban rail transit management. One Brain for urban rail operations implements full-lifecycle metro management and enables digital and intelligent metro construction, operations, and locomotive maintenance, reducing Operations and Maintenance (O&M) costs.
As an urban traffic operation management solution, TrafficGo employs the cloud, video, radar, AI, and other technologies to intelligently adjust traffic light timing based on real-time road traffic flows, shortening the wait time at intersections by 17.7%.
Based on the digital platform provided by One Cloud, One Brain for operations focuses more on applications. Take urban rail as an example. Currently, line-based metro management is widely used in cities. Each metro line requires one OCC that includes more than ten siloed subsystems, such as the signaling system, Passenger Information System (PIS) , CCTV, and Automated Fare Collection (AFC). If ten metro lines need to be managed, ten OCCs are required, including more than 100 subsystems. Inevitably, this causes difficulties in terms of IT resource sharing, increasing O&M costs. Huawei's Urban Rail Cloud Solution uses a unified cloud platform to centralize OCCs and uniformly manage all metro lines within a city. By sharing IT resources with related subsystems, the solution can greatly increase IT resource usage and lower O&M costs. Both Hohhot Metro and Shanghai Metro have started trial operation of Huawei's Urban Rail Cloud Solution.
“One Network” provides various kinds of bearer networks, such as GSM-R, LTE, 5G, Wi-Fi 6, and OTN, to connect business nodes, sensors, and terminals to the IOC.
Huawei has been working in the global transportation industry for more than 20 years, serving more than 120,000 km of railways, more than 170 metro lines, over 60 airports, and 110,000 km of road, along with multiple logistics and port customers. During this time, it has built a solid foundation for the digital transformation of transportation. In the future, Huawei will work together with industry customers to develop "Five Ones" solution — One ID for passengers, One Order for logistics, One Brain for operations, One Cloud for computing, and One Network for connectivity — and embark on the next phase in the journey toward digital and intelligent transportation.
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