Telchina: Huawei Horizon Digital Platform Makes ‘Grid+’ Urban Management More Intelligent

The digital and intelligent transformation of various industries is in full swing, integrating new technologies, such as cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI). By offering ubiquitous connectivity, pervasive intelligence, and Huawei Horizon Digital Platform, Huawei is helping enterprises capture the emerging opportunities. On the upper level, Huawei supports rapid application development and flexible deployment, enabling agile innovation of services in various industries. At the base level, Huawei’s ‘cloud-pipe-device’ synergy is achieved through ubiquitous connectivity, bridging the physical world with the digital world. Huawei Horizon Digital Platform serves as the foundation for digital transformation, enabling data aggregation, data intelligence, and data-based operations.

Telchina Smart Industry Group is now a leader in Smart City development and urban management, sustaining a competitive advantage through its extensive project experience, technical strength, and customer service capabilities. By working closely with Huawei, Telchina has developed the ‘Grid+’ urban management platform based on Huawei Horizon Digital Platform. The collaborative project ensures that Telchina’s smart solutions and services are improved, while also providing the potential to design and develop new Smart Cities.

‘Grid+’: A New Model for Urban Grid Management and Services

Proposed by Telchina, ‘Grid+’ is a new urban grid management and service model based on the ‘Internet+’ concept (the application of information technology in conventional industries). The ‘grid + N’ principle, where N represents management services in various fields, is designed to meet grid requirements for urban management and services. Consequently, the government’s management model has changed from one that is reactive and problem-centric to one that prioritizes prevention and service improvement.

The new model expands grid management from simply detecting and resolving urban management issues to grid-based, refined urban management and services — all using the same platform. Adhering to the concept of proactive management, the government sorts urban issues based on existing urban challenges. Functional departments then produce management and service lists; actively develop countermeasures; and prevent issues from reoccurring. Additionally, the new model extends communication channels between the government and the public, using the public to identify issues and supervise grid management and service. The new model establishes four grid management and service systems: grid + public needs; grid + proactive management; grid + proactive services; and grid + supervision and appraisal — creating a ‘grid + N’ smart urban management and service model. The government is committed to optimizing urban management and services, realizing refined management, and improving the living standards for residents.

• ‘Grid+’ Urban Management Platform Unifies Public ‘Grid+’ Mechanisms to Avoid Construction Faults

Based on the unified grid division standards, the unified grid platform serves multiple purposes and facilitates data sharing. By using the cloud computing service architecture, each department can establish customized grid management systems by managing its rights and configuring basic services. The platform can create dedicated management systems, such as ‘grid + city management,’ ‘grid + social management,’ and ‘grid + community applications.’ Taken together, a multi-level ‘grid + N’ management system is formed, covering the whole city or county.

In the ‘grid + department’ module, each department specifies the responsibilities in its management and service lists, with the manager specified in the ‘grid + person’ module. In addition, an issue list enables grid administrators to delegate issues to the appropriate grid managers and departments. In special industries, such as public security and transportation, dedicated grids can be divided to locate problems and events using coordinates.

• ‘Grid+’ Urban Management Platform Unifies Information Portals to Collect and Share All Data, Improving Government Services

‘Grid+’ urban management and services is supported by a physical supervision center that collects information from multiple channels, including grid administrators, city hotlines, SMS, websites, and WeChat official accounts. The center serves as a unified information portal to collect and analyze urban issues, with the information compiled into an issues list. Later, management and service lists can be generated based on the nature of the issue and the department’s core functions, and issues can be assigned to respective departments for handling.

Using online resources, such as the ‘Grid + WeChat/app,’ the government is able to take part in more meaningful interactions with the public. An information channel is formed, which relies on public reporting and is supplemented by reports from grid administrators. The benefits of this approach are manifold: it unifies compliant channels, clarifies department functions, and prevents the shirking of responsibility.

Huawei Horizon Digital Platform: Creating a More Intelligent ‘Grid+’ Urban Management Platform

On Huawei Horizon Digital Platform, the Real-Time Open Multi-Cloud Agile (ROMA) platform supports industry enablement. It provides one-stop integration services for various grid applications, including messaging apps, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and data integration, simplifying the architecture for application integration. ROMA interconnects with databases, middleware, and public cloud services, and supports conversion between multiple protocols, such as APIs, messaging apps, and databases. The configuration-based design reduces the workload for integrated development and lowers skill requirements for implementation personnel. Moreover, reliable APIs and cross-region message integration relieves issues that complicate the underlying network.

Huawei Horizon Digital Platform’s integrated communications capabilities enable the ‘Grid+’ urban management platform to receive incident reports using multiple channels. In addition to hotlines, the platform supports reporting using voice, SMS, fax, VoLTE, apps, IoT, and video security systems, offering a unified incident portal. The platform analyzes incident reports to classify and prioritize incidents. Priority is given to major disasters and incidents at important organizations, improving a government’s emergency response capabilities. The platform also supports unified routing: even when different channels are used, the user’s requests will be routed to the same agent who is able to process the user’s audio, video, and multimedia messages simultaneously. Additionally, VoLTE video calls can be made on phones, making it easier to report incidents, while also being more cost-effective, with assured call quality.

Huawei Horizon Digital Platform’s IoT and video capabilities enable automatic case detection, and intelligent case registration and distribution on the ‘Grid+’ urban management platform. This means that IoT devices — smart manhole covers, street lights, and video security systems — can be used to identify potential risks in the city. Urban management incidents, after being found, are automatically reported to the supervision and command center, which then verifies and registers the case, and delegates the case to the related service department. This reduces labor costs and complaints, and improves resident satisfaction. Intelligent case registration and distribution also improve case processing efficiency, while helping governments improve their reputation.

Huawei Horizon Digital Platform’s Integrated Communications Platform (ICP) is used to construct the industry’s first integrated command center that supports full-process visualization. It features a Computer-Assisted Dispatch (CAD) system as its core, while it integrates voice, video, and data communications modes, and visualizes information on the unified Geographic Information System (GIS) platform. The ICP enables unified scheduling of resources and improves inter-department collaboration capabilities by working with grid applications. City decision-makers and experts can join a consultation conference either from mobile terminals or on an HD videoconferencing endpoint anywhere, anytime, to provide directions and guidance to on-site police officers in real time. The center also displays the statuses of emergency resources, such as people, vehicles, and objects, on maps in real time, and it enables real-time synchronized information sharing for cross-agency collaboration in an emergency.

Huawei Horizon Digital Platform integrates core capabilities, such as AI and Enterprise Intelligence (EI), to intelligently analyze video and structured data, providing intelligent case analysis and analysis support for grid applications. The video AI automatically identifies incidents such as road blockages, and sends related information — geographical location and image evidence — to urban management departments, while simultaneously reporting cases to the grid management platform. Then, cases are registered and processed accordingly. Cases that are verified are automatically assigned to the related department for handling, in turn accelerating case processing. In addition, grid applications feed data to the grid management platform, which is then visualized, presenting the data in a more comprehensive way.

The urban grid management platform, developed by Telchina and Huawei, has already been deployed in regions such as Lanzhou New Area and Gaoqing in Shandong Province. As well as creating value for customers, the platform also improves the competitiveness of Telchina’s smart products and solutions.