Xiong'an Jinghu: Welcome to the City of the Future

The decision to set up the Xiong'an New Area is promoted to be "a strategy to last a thousand years". Located 100 kilometers southwest of Beijing, the Xiong'an New Area has been easing pressure on the congested capital through a series of relocation projects. Seven years since the announcement of this flagship national project, Xiong'an New Area has grown into an innovative, green, and smart modern city.

Jinhu Future City is one of the first projects in Xiong'an New Area to accommodate the relocated subsidiaries and branches of centrally administered state-owned enterprises previously based in Beijing. It is also among the first market-oriented large-scale comprehensive parks in the area. As such, Jinhu has attracted attention from all walks of life.

In May 2024, Jinhu Future City finally confirmed its readiness for commercial use and was open for visit, presenting to the public a model project for a world-class high-end complex in Xiong'an New Area. Its official launch brings to life what once was a vision of a smart city of the future, where everything is sensed, connected, and intelligent.

A Grand Dream Brought to Reality

Jinhu Future City is a high-end complex consisting of 255 buildings of different types, including commercial and financial industrial parks, the community space of Rongdong District, libraries, schools, and performing arts centers. It boasts over 10,000 residential apartments alongside vast office space (440,000 square meters) and high-end business district (240,000 square meters). In addition, the complex has two lake parks, along with amenities for educational, cultural, and public services, catering to people's needs in all aspects of work and life. Upon official delivery, it will accommodate over 50,000 people for work and business.

Constructing a cluster of buildings that blend functionality and aesthetics is just the first challenge that Hebei Construction & Investment Group (HECIG), contractor of the Jinhu Future City project, overcame as they outlined the new smart city. They were also faced with another tough mission to improve user experience and operations.

The real estate industry has entered a critical period of digital transformation, where the key to industry development is no longer just building, but more importantly, creating — leveraging innovation and digital technology to create new opportunities for the industry and enhance real estate operations, product offerings, and services. It has become essential for real estate companies to consider how to use cutting-edge technology to improve residents' living experience, reduce costs and increase efficiency in management, and promote low-carbon and eco-friendly business operations to pave the way for long-term development. In the Jinhu Future City project, HECIG partnered with Huawei to tackle this challenge and create a benchmark for digital transformation in the real estate industry.

Enhancing Residential Experience Through Smart Operations

In the intelligent operation center (IOC) of the Jinhu Future City project stands an interactive display wall, affectionately known as the Hogwarts Wall, which vividly showcases the smart living scenes that are about to unfold here. If you touch the lamp poles, buildings, and rivers on the wall, corresponding smart scenes will be illuminated and demonstrated through multimedia.

The two-dimensional miniature landscape on the Hogwarts Wall has been brought to life in the real world by HECIG and Huawei. They have incorporated a technological brain into the comprehensive park, utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, big data, AI, and more with the support of the Huawei Intelligent Campus Solution. Through seven smart scenes, they have set a new standard for integrated smart complexes.

(1) IOC: Streamlining campus operations

The IOC is built based on Huawei's campus digital platform. It integrates 21 systems, from security and access control to equipment, vehicles, energy consumption, investment promotion, and property leasing and sales. All data is aggregated into a central data lake and displayed on a single dashboard using Geographical Information System (GIS) and Building Information Modeling (BIM) technologies.

The IOC offers comprehensive management for seven themes related to campus security, operations, and services. These include overall situational awareness, personnel and vehicle traffic, security, asset and equipment, energy efficiency, user enterprise, and office management. This ensures that operational data can be fully integrated, the operations status fully visualized, events fully controllable, and services fully managed, allowing the campus to increase operational efficiency while cutting costs.

To enable swift decision-making informed by operational and service data, the IOC is also equipped with a sensing data center powered by IoT, big data, and optical networking. This allows for the possibility of managing large communities in a more organized way with under 10 property management organizations, down from the original 20+.

(2) Smart security: Enhancing efficiency by reducing repetitive work

The operator of Jinhu Future City uses advanced AI algorithms and video technology to assist human security guards. Despite a reduction of over 50% in security personnel's workloads, the campus has not compromised the scope or accuracy of its security management or emergency response; these have in fact significantly improved. Response times have been reduced from minutes to seconds. The adoption of IoT and video AI technology has enabled one person to take care of multiple areas, expanding management coverage far beyond the previous one-person-per-post setup.

(3) Smart access: Ensuring seamless travel through unified management

Jinhu Future City's rental and sales system allows tenants to complete all the steps for selecting and renting a property in one place. Once the contract is signed, the owner's authorized information will be synchronized across different application scenarios, such as gates and access control checkpoints, granting the owner the necessary access permissions.

(4) Smart campus: Contributing to green development

Jinhu Future City extensively relies on green energy sources. It has a 1-megawatt photovoltaic (PV) power station that produces approximately 1 million kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, allowing the campus to consume the electricity it generates and exports any excess power to the grid. The PV system is seamlessly integrated with the architectural design and aligns with the country's low-carbon development goals. Additionally, the smart energy efficiency system, powered by AI algorithms, can cut energy consumption by over 10%.

(5) Simplified converged network: Saving costs in network O&M

Jinhu Future City's network architecture is carefully designed to combine the benefits of IP networking and Passive Optical LAN (POL) products, resulting in simplified access, architecture, and O&M. This effectively resolves common problems found in traditional campuses, including unstable networks, low management efficiency, and high operating costs. Through pre-integration and validation, establishing office and extra-low voltage networks at Jinhu Future City was a quick process, expediting service deployment.

(6) Smart office: Making the work experience more efficient

The smart office system integrates video conferencing, interactive collaboration, and remote screen sharing, complete with intelligent meeting features like voice control and smart speaker tracking to improve office productivity.

(7) Smart home: Creating a comfortable environment with proactive intelligent services

With the use of technology, the entire home is transformed into a welcoming and smart living space that boosts consumer satisfaction and unlocks commercial value. This allows for added value based on intelligent space operations.

Get Ready to Explore the Smart City of the Future

The dream of a futuristic smart city is taking shape at Jinhu Future City, which is now complete and eagerly awaits visitors and potential residents to explore this new technological hub. On May 17, Jinhu welcomed its first group of visitors — journalists from 20 media outlets across the country who were invited by HECIG and Huawei for a day-long tour of the campus.

During the tour, the journalists were indulged with the smart technology that permeates throughout Jinhu Future City, from smart parking and traffic management to smart streetlights, homes, and offices. Future residents will be impressed, just as these journalists were, by the one-stop-shop convenient services that greatly enhance their living and working experience.

Jinhu Future City will also be welcoming enough to prospective property operators and managers, offering all kinds of applications such as integrated security and smart property management systems, as well as express maintenance services. Backed by the campus digital platform for unified access, service, and O&M, along with the IOC that senses everything and displays every event, Jinhu Future City is set to achieve cost reduction, boosted efficiency, and green and low-carbon practices.

Every city is built for its inhabitants. As more individuals and businesses move to this futuristic city through ongoing relocation projects, digital technology will become an integral part of daily life, serving the public in every aspect. This will be the finishing touch for the vision of a smart city of the future, showcasing the beauty of a peaceful and contented life for all.

Technology helps us centrally manage people, vehicles, assets, facilities, events, and links throughout the entire campus, allowing us to provide better services for relocated businesses and residents. The Jinhu Future City project is dedicated to creating a livable and business-friendly urban area that is coordinated, integrated, green, and intelligent. The project has always been centered around people, from its initiation to construction.

——— Wang Yunfang, Director of Information Technology of the Engineering Management Department at HECIG

We are committed to building a city that serves the people, continuously improving our operational management and services to support the development and construction of the new area. We aim to accumulate experience and make more significant contributions to relieving Beijing of functions nonessential to its role as the capital city.

——— Fang Qinhui, Chairman of the Board at HECIG

Upon the seventh anniversary of the decision to set up Xiong'an New Area, Jinhu Future City and Huawei are unveiling an intelligent campus for a new lifestyle. This project helps spread out some non-capital functions from Beijing while also exploring digital technology to foster innovation. It serves as a model for the digital transformation of the real estate industry.

Jinhu Future City's vision of a smart futuristic city is much beyond just concrete and steel. Here, smart technology will play a significant role in enhancing urban life, enabling a people-centric, friendly, and delightful experience for all inhabitants.