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Alibaba starts Smart City AI Platform in Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur: Chinese global retailer Alibaba now starts building Smart City Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform in Malaysia. The company has rolled out its first Smart City AI platform in the country outside its domestic market.

According to the sources, the platform was launched on Monday with local ICT agencies including city council Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (DBKL) and Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC).

The new platform is named “The Malaysia City Brain” which is AI-powered operated on Alibaba’s cloud infrastructure, Alibaba has developed this technology specifically to transform cities to go digital making them smart cities. The system handles and processes large data volumes from different sources in an urban city via video, images and speech recognition. The system then utilizes machine learning (ML) to provide insights to administrators of the city in order to watch their progress, improve efficiency and monitor security risks.

Alibaba explained it with a short example how it works, “By combining insights from transportation department, public transport systems, and mapping apps, the “City Brain” would be able to develop virtual digital city model with ongoing machine learning, the system would itself optimize this digitally constructed city model and provide decision making ideas for the administrators such as; road planning, frequency, bus routes, traffic duration to optimize the traffic flow and much more.”

Alibaba said the platform was first implemented and tested in China’s City Hangzhou in September 2016.

However, this deployment is the first phase in which Kuala Lumpur would be able to optimize its traffic management using City Brain. The goal is to improve the traffic and mobility around the city. The AI system would also provide more deep insights to detect incidents by reading traffic data, speeds, road lanes etc.

Moreover, the platform can also be connected to other Urban cities and their management systems to provide more control over management in the surroundings.

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Not only this, the City Brain will also be used by companies, research institutes, start-ups and universities as it grows in order to leverage its AI tools and drive more innovation to the entire system. Besides this development, Alibaba has also unveiled plans in Malaysia focusing on Big Data Program. This would be a big data crowd intelligence platform aiming at global data experts to collaborate for the development of applications for real-world problems.

The program is also supported by MDEC, the program is expected to incubate 500 data professionals and 300 startups in two years’ time. They all would be using Alibaba’s cloud platform to develop applications. Alibaba also has plans to develop distribution Centre in Malaysia which it announced last year in March.