City 'health report' highlights safety risks

Shanghai has received a "health report" as a reference to improve urban safety.

The Safety Development of Shanghai Urban Operation (2019-2020), released recently by the Institute for Urban Risk Management of Tongji University, calls attention to chronic, complex, repeated and sudden risks.

By the end of 2019, Shanghai had more than 42,000 high-rise buildings, including 1,700 with 30-plus floors. It also boasted massive infrastructure – 24,000 kilometers of pipelines used for water, electricity, gas and communication facilities, according to the report.

The report suggests building a one-stop digital platform for different authorities to share information and work together to eliminate safety risks, in particular adding functions of predicting common risks such as fire in residences to a big data-backed urban operation center.

Li Yihong, an official from the city's Housing and Urban-rural Development Commission, said a digital platform to prevent and manage "falling objects from tall buildings" has been developed.

Besides, the city has put in place a monitoring platform to record information about buildings with glass walls. To date, more than 8,000 buildings have been included.

The report was released during the 2021 Summit Forum on Urban Risk Management held last week. Nearly 700 government officials, scholars, experts and businessmen shared their views.

"The city has life. It is the most complicated artificial life," said Wu Zhiqiang, a Tongji University professor. "We should strive to be an intelligent city which can learn and remember the past, and integrate the experiences into city governance."