Pudong residents happy with new reporting system for environmental concerns
Residents of Pudong can now report concerns about the city environment to authorities through a newly-launched app.
Instead of searching for contacts for authorities and waiting for a response, people working and living in the Pudong New Area can report issues such as random parking of shared bikes and illegal dumping of rubbish.
Through the app, Pudong E Home, people can directly upload pictures of scenes and describe the problems. And they can see when authorities solve the problem. The whole process is transparent and open.
Currently, the app has more than 80,000 registered users who make thousands of complaints every day. The satisfaction rate is 94.87 percent.
Pudong has also recruited more than 600 volunteers to patrol the streets on the lookout for environment-related problems. They have reported 11,523 problems, and every one was solved in a timely manner.
“Previously, I needed to report to Pudong’s civilization office first after I discovered problems," said volunteer Tian Shijun. "The office asked the involved authorities and neighborhoods to deal with the problems. It cost at least three days.
“But now, authorities can handle problems in a very efficient way. Yesterday, there was broken manhole cover, which imposed safety risks, in the bustling Lujiazui area. I immediately took pictures and uploaded to the online platform. Within just two hours, authorities sent people to solve it."
According to the Pudong government, it is part of the district’s efforts to spruce up the district environment in a “smart” way.
Based on big data and artificial intelligence, Pudong has designed a “City Brain” urban management system covering more than 50 scenarios including noisy neighbors, good driving manners and safety risks on working sites.
“Through cameras and sensors, we can track the whole process of handling garbage, from sorting, collection, transportation to treatment,” said Xue Jialiang, deputy director of the Pudong Ecology and Environment Bureau.
He cited a local neighborhood as example. The weekly volume of wet waste was nearly half down, which was quite abnormal and alerted authorities. After investigation, they found that a newly-recruited cleaner was mixing the waste, and told the neighborhood to deal with it.
According to the Pudong government, more functions will be added to the system in the future.