chsdbacks Chapter 233 Smart Cities
Chapter 233 Smart Cities
The Hangzhou Smart City project has been in operation for a full quarter, and a third-party evaluation report has been released.
The first page of the report contains only one number.
The city's operational efficiency improved by 47 percent.
The report used thirty-six pages to explain how this number was calculated. Zuo Cheng placed the report on the conference table and flipped through it from the first page to the last, without saying a word the entire time.
The first piece of data is the complete coverage of the Sky Dome network. High-speed communication with zero blind spots has been achieved in all areas of Hangzhou, including underground parking garages, subway tunnels, and remote mountainous areas. Previously, an emergency rescue team in a remote mountainous area encountered a landslide during construction, and the communication blind spot caused a delay of nearly twenty minutes in their rescue instructions. Similar situations have completely disappeared since the system went online.
Quantum traffic scheduling is the second piece of data. The congestion index during morning and evening rush hours has decreased by more than 60%, saving citizens an average of 37 minutes of commuting time per day. Behind this figure is the Tianyan quantum computer's ability to calculate the dynamic optimal signal timing for all intersections in the city every 30 seconds, and its real-time dynamic route recommendation capability to disperse traffic flow from congested points to secondary roads. The big data director of the Hangzhou Traffic Management Bureau made a comparison: a traditional optimization algorithm of the same scale takes four minutes to calculate once and can only cover main roads. The solution calculated four minutes ago has already changed by the time the traffic conditions change. Quantum computing reduces the time window from four minutes to thirty seconds and expands the coverage from main roads to every road with traffic lights, effectively increasing the response speed of the entire city's traffic system by four hundred times.
The emergency medical network is the most touching aspect. Three top-tier hospitals have connected to the Interstellar Neuro-Diagnosis System, reducing the average time for stroke patients from onset to diagnosis, assessment, and entry into the operating room from 120 minutes to 40 minutes. Emergency room nurses described how they used to dread patient arrivals during peak hours, as the journey could take up to half an hour. Now, the system immediately plans a dedicated green light corridor for the ambulance as soon as it hits the road, saving travel time.
Unmanned systems have covered another corner of urban management. Drones are responsible for inspections and environmental monitoring, while unmanned vehicles handle emergency response and material transportation, reducing urban management labor costs by 35%. What used to require 30 people monitoring large screens can now be managed by a single dispatcher and a system. An official from the urban management department made an interesting remark: "We used to manage the city; now we work with the city. These two things sound similar, but the feeling is completely different."
The data from space photovoltaics was a pleasant surprise. In 30 communities connected to the space photovoltaic distributed microgrid, residents' electricity bills dropped by 22%, with two older communities seeing a decrease of over 30%. This led the street office staff to initially believe there was a system error and they made a special call to verify it.
On the day the assessment report was submitted to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, things began to develop at a speed that exceeded everyone's expectations.
The mayors of eight provincial capitals jointly issued a letter.
The way the letter was sent was interesting; instead of being sent separately, it was a joint letter with eight names listed together, requesting that the 402 standard be prioritized for implementation in their respective cities. These cities included Shenzhen, Chengdu, Wuhan, Nanjing, Xi'an, Zhengzhou, Hefei, and Changsha, covering five regions: South China, Southwest China, Central China, East China, and Northwest China. Within two days of sending the letter, both the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the National Development and Reform Commission called, asking the same question: Could the 402 standard be developed into a replicable standard and promoted nationwide?
Han Lu made a copy of the letter and placed it on Zuo Cheng's desk, along with a quick estimate of the total contract amount. The average contract amount per city was 1.2 billion RMB, totaling nearly 10 billion RMB for eight cities.
"This is just the first batch," she said.
"I know," Zuo Cheng said. "But don't rush. The data from Hangzhou took a whole quarter to come up. If we want to replicate it in other cities, we need to solidify the methodology first. Otherwise, the result won't look like the Hangzhou data, and it will damage our reputation."
He instructed Han Lu to provide a unified response to the eight cities: they would be included in the first batch of promotion plans, and the plan integration would begin.
Two topics trended on social media that day. One was a joint letter from the mayors, and the other was an interview clip of a Hangzhou woman. She was interviewed by a local TV station at a community activity center, and a quote from her speech was screenshotted and widely shared.
"Every morning before I leave the house, I glance at my phone. It tells me which roads aren't congested, how many minutes until the subway arrives, and how much tomatoes cost per pound at the market today. Before, the city was forcing me to move; now, the city is helping me move."
The post received over three million likes the following morning. One commenter did the math: with over seven million permanent residents in Hangzhou, saving each person 37 minutes of commuting time per day equates to nearly half a million extra working hours for the entire city daily. This isn't a small amount of money; it's productivity.
Han Lu forwarded the screenshot to Zuo Cheng, adding four words: This is better than the data.
Zuo Cheng stared at the screen for a while without saying a word.
That same week, three study tour requests from overseas landed on Han Lu's desk: Singapore, Dubai, and Tokyo. Each letter was politely worded, but the core request was the same: they hoped a delegation from 402 would visit to discuss the possibility of introducing a comprehensive smart city solution.
Han Lu walked into Zuo Cheng's office with the three letters in her hands: "What should I say?"
"Let's get it working domestically first, then we can talk about overseas," Zuo Cheng said. "Tell them that after the first batch of domestic cities pass the acceptance inspection, we'll give them the highest priority."
This response kept the representatives from the three cities waiting for a long time, but none of them withdrew their cooperation intentions.
The signing ceremony is scheduled for next week. Representatives from eight cities arrived in Hangzhou in batches, and each group had to review the third-party evaluation report first. No one tried to negotiate after reading the report; the numbers were more convincing than any negotiation skills.
That evening, Yu Ying took a new analysis report into Zuo Cheng's office.
"Of the six sectors of a smart city, transportation data looks the best, but healthcare has the greatest potential." She turned to the last page of the report. "The brain-computer interface emergency network has reduced the time from stroke onset to surgery by two-thirds. If the same logic is applied to all emergency cases—not just stroke, but bone trauma, acute myocardial infarction, poisoning, and all situations where every second counts—this number will be even greater. Moreover, this data will continue to optimize as more and more hospitals connect, forming a medical version of a flywheel."
Zuo Cheng took the report and wrote three words on the first page.
Smart healthcare, the next step.