industryterm:municipal services

Alibaba’s next moon shot is to make cities adapt to their human inhabitants, technology seer says | South China Morning Post
▻http://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation/article/2123856/alibabas-tech-seer-sees-making-cities-adapt-their-inhabitants-next

Wang Jian was once called crazy by Jack Ma Yun, the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group Holding, for suggesting that the company could have its own mobile operating system.

That vision, however, proved prescient as smartphones powered by the company’s YunOS mobile operating platform, which was developed by its Alibaba Cloud subsidiary, surpassed 100 million units last year.

In addition, many of the Hangzhou-based e-commerce company’s recent innovations are rooted in Alibaba Cloud, known as Aliyun in China, as domestic demand for data centre facilities and on-demand computing services delivered over the internet have grown rapidly.

“It’s not about whether I’m crazy or not, it’s about this era,” Wang, the chairman of Alibaba’s technology steering committee, said in an interview in Hong Kong, where he met with some journalists to talk about his new book Being Online. “[This] is a crazy era, so many new things are happening.”

Wang, 55, said the city of tomorrow should be able to adapt to its surroundings and inhabitants, almost like a living organism, so that municipal services like public transport, health care and education can be delivered in the right measure and time to minimise waste and optimise usage.

Alibaba says it is on track to overtake Amazon as world’s top cloud computing services firm

To that end, a city’s development would be better determined in future by the amount of computing resources it consumes, said Wang. At present, electricity consumption is widely regarded as the measure of development for cities, he added.

Similarly, the day-to-day behaviour of a city’s residents now has little impact on how a city is organised as well as the way its services are planned and developed, said Wang. That would change with advanced computing technologies that are able to track human behaviour.

“Do you want to take the bus, or is it because it’s been put there so you’re taking it?” asked Wang, using fixed bus routes as an example of how a city’s services are rigid and do not adapt quickly to changing patterns in the behaviour of its residents.

Citing the example of a project in northern China, where railway workers were able to tell staff canteens along the line of which meals they plan to have, operators of these dining halls were able to prepare the right amount of food, leading to less waste. [Alibaba Group Holding’s annual Singles’ Day shopping festival on November 11 is a testament to the way cloud computing has changed the retail industry in China. Photo: Edward Wong]

In its home market in the eastern coastal Chinese city of Hangzhou, Alibaba has created a so-called City Brain that uses artificial intelligence – specifically, deep learning technology that teaches computers to learn and perform tasks based on classifying data – to send out instant traffic alerts and route suggestions to motorists.

Alibaba said traffic speed has improved by up to 11 per cent in one of Hangzhou’s districts, and that several other cities in China were now implementing smart transport programmes.

Neil Wang, the Greater China president of consultancy firm Frost & Sullivan, said integrating technology into a city’s operations enabled traffic to be monitored in real-time and fed back to users, allowing drivers to check traffic conditions and adjust their route during the journey, or even find a vacant parking space via a mobile app.

“Creating a sustainable and self-conscious city with the help of big data technology is the main idea behind this approach,” said Wang. “Smart cities can use the latest digital technologies to improve their resource allocation, as well as the quality of life for their residents. In particular, transport, health care, and education are some of the key areas that will benefit.”

The global smart cities market, which comprises of interrelated domains that impact urban living, is forecast to reach US$1.2 trillion by 2019, according to research company Technavio in a report published in February. These domains include industry automation, smart grid, security, education, home and building, health care, transport, and water and waste.
Smart cities can use the latest digital technologies to improve their resource allocation, as well as the quality of life for their residents.

New York-listed Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post, is not alone in trying to make cities more adaptable to human behaviour. Many other companies, including Google owner Alphabet, are involved in various projects around the world that integrate information technology with city planning.

In October, Alibaba said it will double research and development spending to US$15 billion over the next three years to develop futuristic technologies that could transform whole industries, or so-called moon shot projects. To do that, the company will set up research labs around the world and hire scientists.

For Wang, Alibaba’s annual Singles’ Day shopping festival on November 11 is a testament to the way cloud computing has changed the way people shop in China. This year’s edition of the 24-hour shopping promotion chalked up a record of more than US$25 billion in sales.

The event is made possible by the coming together of mobile payments, e-commerce and back-end logistics underpinned by cloud computing.

Smart cities: Digital world unlocks door to the future

“If you think about it, being able to shop at night while tucked into bed, and having that parcel land on your doorstep the next day is in itself crazy,” Wang said.

There will be more inventions that today may look wacky but could be the norm of tomorrow, Wang said. Citing the example of Thomas Edison’s light bulb, which made it possible to demonstrate the usage of electricity, he said future applications on the internet may exceed the limits of human imagination today.

“We’re just at the beginning of the beginning of the beginning.”

Additional reporting by Zen Soo
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Smart cities next idea in tech chief’s crazy era

#Chine #e-commerce #smart-cities #surveillance #disruption

Otherwise Occupied Make East Jerusalem the Capital of Palestine
Twenty steps that will reverse the situation – and be far less painful than the alternative
Amira Hass Oct 12, 2015 9:26 AM

▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.679909

http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.661584.1434521881!/image/431835479.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_857x482/431835479.jpg

A Decade Behind the Wall: Jerusalem’s 100,000 Outcasts
Israeli civil rights NGO sends letter to Netanyahu saying state has violated basic rights of an entire population, and that government’s policy ’constitutes criminal negligence’ and ’abandonment’ of residents beyond separation wall.

Nir Hasson Aug 13, 2015
read more: ►http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.670894 Haaretz Daily Newspaper Israel News
►http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.670894

Ten years after the separation wall was built in Jerusalem, it transpires that the state and municipality have broken almost all their promises to the tens of thousands of Israelis left on the eastern side of the fence.
The decade that has passed since Ariel Sharon’s cabinet decided to minimize the disruption in the lives of the residents east of the fence “was marked by systematically breaking all the government’s commitments,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The association accuses the state of violating the basic rights of an entire population, and says the government’s policy “constitutes criminal negligence” and the “abandonment” of the residents beyond the wall.
“The government’s policy has turned the neighborhoods into a no man’s land, in which nobody is interested and for which nobody is responsible,” wrote attorneys Nasrin Alian and Ronit Sela.
In July 2005 Sharon’s cabinet issued a detailed decision, intended to satisfy the Supreme Court that the wall would not disrupt the lives of the Palestinians residents, most of them Israeli citizens, on the eastern side of it. The cabinet tasked the government ministries and Jerusalem municipality to ensure continued health, education, infrastructure, municipal and government services to the people beyond the wall, in the neighborhoods of Ras Khamis, Ras Skhada, Hashalom, Kfar Akav, Semiramis and the Shoafat refugee camp. But practically none of this was carried out.
For example, no new schools, clinics or hospital branches opened beyond the wall, no branches of the transportation, labor or interior ministries operate there, no roads or infrastructure were built, no access for emergency vehicles was provided into the neighborhoods, no hotline for municipal services was set up at the roadblocks as promised, the waiting time at the roadblocks wasn’t shortened, and on and on.
In addition, the garbage in the neighborhoods beyond the wall is only partially collected and there is no supervision on construction, which has led to rampant illegal building. These buildings were quickly inhabited by poor people who couldn’t afford to live anywhere else and the population has multiplied. As a result, the water and sewage systems have collapsed, there is a severe shortage of public buildings, schools and classrooms and the traffic is clogged.

In Jerusalem, the Israeli tormentor whines
The question isn’t why firecrackers are being thrown in East Jerusalem, but what are the aims of a government that systematically beats down and harasses a population.
By Amira Hass | Nov. 10, 2014 Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.625527

East Jerusalem is a battered and tortured city. And the master doing the beating and inflicting the torture rubs his hands contentedly since, once again, he’s been able to get his fellow masters abroad and in the media to be shocked by the violence of the beaten ones and to ignore the nonstop terror attacks that he commits.

East Jerusalem under Israeli domination for nearly half a century is a city haunted by violence. State violence. To calculate the proper dosage of new draconian laws, cement blocks and stinking water [to “quell riots”] our experts measure and weigh why there is unrest now in East Jerusalem and break down the reasons as follows: 13 percent is due to the population paying municipal taxes without receiving municipal services; 12 percent, to a shortage of classrooms and housing while land is appropriated for building roads and housing for Jews; 17 percent, to Jews with an overt pogrom-type syndrome who settle in the middle of one’s home; and 58 percent, to Al Aqsa. In short, it’s all due to incitement. If not for the incitement quiet would prevail in East Jerusalem and the master could continue to hurt, torture, beat, rob, torment, and enjoy himself.

One other way the abuser derives pleasure is by talking at length about the violence carried out by the abused. So we’ll do the opposite and talk at length about the abuse.

The master abuses, and hundreds of thousands of Jews who live in the city and profit from the abuse act as if they don’t see or know about it, as if it has nothing to do with them.

Intentional abuse

The question isn’t why is there unrest in East Jerusalem, but what are the aims of the government that for nearly half a century has been torturing, beating, abusing and robbing – and in the past 20 years, under the cover of a peace process, has only intensified its terror attacks against the population under its domination. The country’s leaders are no dummies. Nor are they inexperienced in the ways of oppression. They know that action X results in consequences Y and Z. They know that they are creating an intolerable situation for the native, non-Jewish population.

The answer to the question is clear, and is no earth-shattering revelation. If you purposely create an intolerable situation, your aim is to cause people to decide to go live somewhere else where their situation will be tolerable, perhaps good or even very good. In short, over the years, the Israeli governments and Jerusalem municipal governments, whether Labor or Likud, hoped and aimed to get the Palestinians to vanish from our sight and from the city.

Palestinian resistance

But the Palestinians in Jerusalem didn’t go along with the plan. They’re not leaving. Or at least not in the kind of numbers that would satisfy the demography wizards. And not only are they not going away, they’re disturbing the peace. Hundreds of brave, heroic children and youths are putting their lives on the line and clashing with the security forces to try to remind the world that for the past half century they have been living under a foreign, hostile, oppressive and abusive rule. Dozens more occasionally throw stones at Jews, whom they see as representing that part of the city’s population that isn’t lifting a finger to put an end to the abuse. A few, driven by a desire for revenge, have rammed into Jews with their vehicles in suicide terror attacks.

Over the past 20 years, Israel has added a political tool to its repertoire of devices designed for abuse: the isolation of East Jerusalem from the population of the West Bank and Gaza and a prohibition preventing the official leadership from operating in the city (through the closing of PLO institutions and a ban on political and cultural activity, claiming it is sponsored by the Palestinian Authority). Like many colonialists before it, Israel figures that by fragmenting the population this way and neutralizing its leadership, it will weaken its power of resistance. This system is working so far, and enabling Israel to stick to the status quo of continually altering the situation for the sake of Greater Israel. But there’s a reason why East Jerusalem isn’t following the Israeli blueprint.

Unlike the enclaves of the West Bank and Gaza, where there is an illusion of sovereignty and a Palestinian subcontractor, a governmental buffer that separates the abuser-occupier from the population, in “united” Jerusalem, the Palestinians live directly under the Israeli boot. This policy has led to the impoverishment of most of the East Jerusalem population, caused many from the middle class to leave and led to a relative uniformity in the living conditions of its inhabitants. There’s no longer much difference between the Shoafat refugee camp and the village of Issawiya with all its (stolen) lands.

Why Al Aqsa?

And Jerusalem also happens to be the site of Haram a-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary of the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, a religious and emotional magnet that, also in the absence of charismatic leaders, serves as a national symbol to those who see no political horizon. The holy site is also a religious symbol for another billion and a half people in the world. Which is why it is such a source of strength and power for the small native people that Israel is doing its utmost to dispossess of all concrete and symbolic assets. All East Jerusalemites – including those who oppose revenge attacks and cloaking resistance in religious terms – have become the guardians of the holy compound. And the holy compound is their guardian.