Malaysia to implement Alibaba's smart city solution in capital

KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysia will be the first country outside China to adopt Alibaba Cloud's City Brain solution, according to the world's e-commerce giant.

Alibaba Group's cloud computing arm said Monday it had teamed up with Malaysian government agencies, Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (DBKL), to introduce its cloud solution to improve the traffic in the country's capital city Kuala Lumpur.

"The Malaysia City Brain will help Kuala Lumpur to become a role model in Southeast Asia and the world of smart city," Alibaba Group Vice President and Alibaba Cloud's president Hu Xiaoming said, adding that he hopes to transfer the group's successful experience in Hangzhou, the Chinese city where Alibaba's headquarter is located, to Kuala Lumpur.

The initiative had improved the traffic efficiency in Hangzhou by 15 percent, and achieved an average per vehicle savings of three minutes on traffic, according to Hu.

Meanwhile, Malaysia's federal territories minister Adnan Mansor said he expects the initiative to enhance the capital city's traffic condition analysis, traffic signal optimization and accidents detection.

"As Malaysia City Brain develops, we will see Malaysians benefited from better traffic flow, faster response time from emergency services, handling of road traffic incidents and safety," he said when delivering his speech.

According to MDEC's chief executive officer Yasmin Mahmood, the pilot phrase of the collaboration will begin with a base of 382 cameras feeds and input from 281 traffic light junction.

"We aim to complete the first phase by May. We also hope to expand it to other cities," she told a press conference.

Alibaba Cloud has also on Monday introduced the Malaysia Tianchi Big Data program, which aims to help incubate 500 data professionals and 300 startups with the AI technology within two years.