Macau teams up with Alibaba to turn smart city vision into reality
Macau is harnessing the cloud computing capabilities of Chinese technology giant Alibaba Group to help it transform into one of Asia Pacific’s leading smart cities.
The special administrative region’s government inked a strategic partnership deal with Alibaba on Friday.
By leveraging the technologies of Alibaba Cloud, the group’s cloud computing arm, the two parties will collaborate in upgrading the IT infrastructure in Macau to foster digital developments in tourism, transportation, health care, governance and talent development.
We are confident about making Macau’s transformation into a smart city a demonstration project across Asia-Pacific region
Residents and tourists visiting Macau are expected to benefit from the partnership, which will see Alibaba Cloud deploy all of the existing practices it uses in smart city projects across the mainland. These range from using artificial intelligence to optimise the management of road, air and water transportation to customising guided tours based on data-driven analysis.
Macau is the world’s richest gambling hub, with casino revenues reaching 23 billion patacas (US$2.86 billion) in July, according to official data released this week.
“Alibaba Cloud’s big data and deep learning technologies have been helping to build ‘city brains’ in China to help local governments effectively make management decisions,” said Simon Hu, senior vice president of Alibaba Group and president of Alibaba Cloud.
“We are confident about making Macau’s transformation into a smart city a demonstration project across Asia-Pacific region,” he said in an interview with the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba.