Discussion on city's digital transformation opens at Shanghai Tower

A discussion about Shanghai's digital transformation has been opened at Shanghai Tower.

Shanghai has outlined its ambition of becoming an international capital for digitalization by 2035, with digital technologies more extensively integrated into urban management.

For instance, Shanghai Chengtou Group Corporation, a major state-owned infrastructure company, has built water quality alert systems at Shanghai's three major water sources, a real-time monitoring system at China's tallest building of Shanghai Tower, and the city's first "intelligent highway" which has helped to reduce accident rates by 12 percent, according to Tong Hongwei, a vice general manager from the company's information department.

However, problems have been popping up. Experts believe that two of the major challenges in the transformation are a lack of unified standards in the use of digital technologies and the a lack of talented personnel who know about digitalization and operation.

Chen Zhengwei, deputy director of Shanghai-based tech giant INESA's Smart City Design Institute, also emphasized the importance of the circulation of data elements.