Digital governance is becoming the most important driver of Shanghai's urban digital transformation. It is proposed in the "Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Digital Transformation of Shanghai" that to strengthen the digital public supply of soft and hard collaboration and accelerate the evolution of digital twin city in the digital era. In 2021, Shanghai launched the digital governance project on the smallest urban management units, aiming to activate each "minimum management unit" and practice the "modern governance".
1.A brief introduction of Huamu subdistrict
Huamu subdistrict, in Pudong, is a typical large community in Shanghai, formerly known as Huamu Town, with a total area of about 20.93 km2 and about 249,000 residents (at the end of 2020), of which about 11,200 residents are foreigners. At present, Huamu subdistrict manages 44 neighborhood committees and 168 residential areas in 6 urban communities.
As the core area of Pudong New Area, Huamu subdistrict not only has a high population density, but also crowded with commercial offices. It also gathers a number of municipal public service facilities, such as Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, Oriental Art Center, Shanghai New International Expo Center, Pudong Library and Longyang Road Transportation Hub.
The management of these large and complex urban communities is not an easy task. However, according to the relevant standards, Huamu subdistrict is only equipped with 65 civil servants and two police stations. "How to use very limited resources to achieve high-quality urban community governance?" --This is an urgent problem for Huamu subdistrict.
2.High-resolution data as the foundation of Digital Twin City
Based on intelligent holographic mapping technology, Huamu subdistrict obtained the location of each building, and used intelligent modeling tools to automatically establish the model of a digital city. Then, by combining the multi-dimensional urban big data with this digital city model, a high-resolution database of Huamu Digital Twin City is founded.
Until now, the 8924 buildings in Huamu subdistrict and hundreds and thousands of streets, street furniture, plants, and signage have been recorded, as the digital twins of the real city. Also, considering the city is changing every day, Huamu subdistrict has a management mechanism to update the information in the digital system. For instance, the urban management officer can collect the information of retails and know their changes when doing the garbage sorting check, which means the data of retails can be updated every three days to keep it the same as reality. The 3D map of underground infrastructures is established as well. With this map, the digital system can identify the dangerous area where the pipes of gas and oils locate. The information about plants in the digital system is also able to predict which plants need to be protected when a storm or typhoon comes.
The digital system of Huamu subdistrict
3.Refined urban management in digital twin city
With the digital system, Huamu subdistrict now applied refined management to each community, building and household. For instance, to prevent the spread of Covid-19, the digital system can quickly provide detailed information about each building and the residents in the building. For the day-to-day community social work, the digital system provides the information about elderly or disabled people who need help for the volunteers and social workers. Furthermore, the digital system can quickly build applications in an emergency.
Huamu subdistrict digital twin city is an experiment on the combination of digital technology and community management. On the one hand, the infrastructure information layer, data update mechanism, model establishment method, and application scenarios of the digital twin platform have been tested by the refined management of communities; on the other hand, the application of these technologies in the real world will, in turn, promote the progress of digital twin city technologies.
Source: <https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/v3qcqjhbteY9l3VjzSgW3g>
Edited and translated by Jia Mengyuan
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