In the five-year plan, Macao SAR government proposed the plan to accelerate the construction of livable city and build smart city based on smart tourism, transportation and medical treatment. On August 4, 2017, Macao SAR government signed a Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement on the Construction of Smart City with Alibaba Group to promote the pace of construction of a smart city in Macao through making full use of Alibaba's leading cloud computing, application of big data and other related technical capabilities.
As Macao's largest integrated enterprise, Nam Kwong Group provides active support for the Macao SAR government to build smart city, takes advantage of its extensive footprint in various fields of people's livelihood in Macao and a deep knowledge of relevant data, and builds smart energy, smart transportation, smart tourism and smart logistics by virtue of the information technology through the various business sectors to create “Smart Nam Kwong” and promote the construction of Smart City in Macao.
At present, our Group has completed the preliminary market research for the construction of Smart City in Macao. We focus on the development orientation of smart tourism and smart transportation in Macao, operate products and services for people's livelihood and provide services that are convenient to the people and benefit the people through seven projects in the fields such as energy, transportation, travel, hotel and logistics (including natural gas supply and service, intelligent wireless gas meter reading system for Macao residents, application of LPG RFID cylinder technology, intelligent parking spot management system, application of Macao intelligent travel guide, application of hotel face recognition and self-service check-in technologies, application of real-time monitoring and management technologies of dangerous goods vehicles, etc.)in combination with the construction of “one center and one platform”. In this way, we are committed to effectively maintaining the prosperity and stability of Macao's society, and promoting sustained growth in the cause of "one country with two systems".
Introduction to specific projects:
I. Supply and Service of Natural Gas
NAM KWONG Natural Gas Company Limited is engaged in the construction of Macao natural gas distribution pipe network, providing natural gas supply and service for four types of customers including industrial and commercial users, public and public welfare users, gas facility operators, and fueling station operators. By virtue of advanced technology and high-quality materials, the company is committed to building safe, stable and reliable natural gas pipeline network. At present, the company has built natural gas receiving gate stations, operation centers and more than 40 kilometers of natural gas pipeline network, with the main pipeline network already covering Cotai and Coloane areas basically and being stretching to Macao Peninsula.
Since January 2013 when public houses in Macao began to have access to natural gas, the company has successively provided natural gas supply for customers such as TCM SOCIEDADE DE TRANSPORTES COLECTIVOS DE MACAU S.A., Universidade de Macau in Hengqin, Studio City Macau, One Oasis, Taipa Military Camp, Liansheng Industrial Zone, Wynn Palace, The Parisian Macao, Sands Cotai Central and MGM COTAI Macau, and prepared to fuel large comprehensive entertainment projects including Lisboa Palace. Among them, Sands Cotai Central is Macao’s first large lottery enterprise project that successfully converted from petroleum gas to natural gas.
The customers adopt the pipeline gas supply mode featuring small facility space occupation, high supply stability and low operation and maintenance costs, which is obviously superior to traditional fuel in terms of project input, operation, maintenance, etc. In the near future, natural gas, the green energy source, will be available to more Macao citizens, businesses and enterprises.
With the "smart gas" involving advanced GIS system and SCADA system of natural gas pipe network, the people from all walks of life can learn the planning, path, materials and related technical parameters of the natural gas pipeline. In addition, it can demonstrate the scientific construction technology, the advanced monitoring system, as well as the measures to prevent artificial damage to the underground pipeline.
TCM SOCIEDADE DE TRANSPORTES COLECTIVOS DE MACAU S.A. and MACAU NOVA ERA DE AUTOCARROS PUBLICOS, S. A of CHNIA TRAVEL SERVICE (MACAO) LIMITED subordinate to NAM KWONG GROUP were founded in 1974 and 2014 respectively, with 54 bus routes, accounting for 67% of the Macau market. As early as September 2012, TCM SOCIEDADE DE TRANSPORTES COLECTIVOS DE MACAU S.A. took the lead in introducing Macao's first CNG bus, which was officially put into the market in February 2013. In the same year, the exhaust emissions of the natural gas bus fleet of TCM SOCIEDADE DE TRANSPORTES COLECTIVOS DE MACAU S.A. achieved “UN Type A” standard. In 2017, in response to the government's five-year development plan, MACAU NOVA ERA DE AUTOCARROS PUBLICOS, S. A introduced a 12-meter-long CNG bus, which was an impetus for Macao to gain 120 CNG buses by 2020.
Among all kinds of urban pollutions, the pollution caused by automobile exhaust accounts for more than 40% on average, while the hazard of toxic gas emission from natural gas vehicles is 85% less than that of gasoline vehicles. Compared with gasoline vehicles, the amount of sulfide, lead and other particulate matters emitted by natural gas vehicles almost equals to zero; the amount of nitrogen compound and carbonic oxide emitted by natural gas vehicles is respectively70%-90% less; and their emissions do not damage the ozone layer
With 69 natural gas vehicles currently, our Group will be committed to green environmental protection as always and move on in line with the slogan of "building an ecological city and sharing a green economy".
II. Intelligent Wireless Meter Reading System of Household Gas Consumption
As Macao SAR government promotes the construction of smart city, the Smart Gas project receives increasing attention and intelligent gas has been developed at a fast pace. As a part of Smart Gas, intelligent wireless meter reading system has been applied in most gas companies. As the traditional manual meter reading method is time consuming and laborious along with a lack of accuracy and timeliness, it no longer meets the needs of social development. Intelligent wireless meter reading system can help to quickly learn the household gas consumption and detect the gas leakage and abnormality in gas consumption, and can thus avoid gas safety accidents.
Intelligent wireless meter reading system of gas consumption is the product of combination of modern information technology and gas metering technology. With the functions such as metering, data collection and data processing in one, the system can comprehensively process the gas consumption information of Macao residents, and thus fundamentally reduce the gas supply company’s labor intensity as an alternative to manual door-to-door meter reading. The system is mainly composed of PC terminal management software, handheld device and intelligent wireless gas meter. The charging level is realized through reading of the data of intelligent wireless meter with the handheld device and data importing into the management software. The accurate and convenient measurement system can not only save manpower, but also reduce disputes between the gas supply department and customers. It can not only improve the work efficiency of the management department, but also meet new demand of modern users for gas consumption payment.
III. Application of LPG RFID Cylinder Technology
With the rapid development of Macao's economy, the usage demand for LPG is increasing. But many hidden dangers now exist in the dangerous goods retail/wholesale market. The rational use and management of cylinder of LPG which is inflammable and explosive concerns life and property safety, and improper handling will cause irreparable the significant loss of life and property. Monitoring of the whole life and circulation process of the cylinder by virtue of the information system technology can realize the identity traceability management of all cylinders circulated in Macau. Computer resume database of LPG cylinder can be established to detect abnormal and bad cylinders for alarm and reminders, realize the informatization and automation of cylinder safety, and revolutionized the previous low-level unsafe operation featuring time-consuming cylinder-by-cylinder identification and manual recording by site operators. In addition, the database can trace the installation time of each cylinder, set an alarm once detecting exceeding of service life of the cylinder and notify the user to for recovery processing, so as to better avoid gas safety accidents.
LPG RFID cylinder technology is the combination of radio frequency and network communication technology. RFID tags are affixed onto the cylinder with passive label technology. It can automatically collect, locate and conduct statistics about the storage management process, service condition as well as in and outs of gas cylinders.
The basic principle of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is to communicate through the coupling or diffusion of spatial electromagnetic wave to automatically identify the identified object and obtain relevant information of the identified object. RFID has many advantages. It does not require line-of-sight transmission, and is easy to be reprogrammed. It can quickly store and read more data and features waterproofness, magnetic-proofness and high temperature resistance.
This technology can completely solve the problem of the unknown quantity of liquefied gas cylinders in the filling process, realize the computer dynamic management of cylinder safety condition, prevent infringements such as non-registration in the filling process or the unit’s lack of the property rights, improve the inspection rate, and realize the data sharing among all management departments.
IV. Intelligent Parking Spot Management System
Land public transport business of Nam Kwong Group accounts for 67% of the market share in Macao. However, it faces many problems such as large quantity of buses, different types of vehicles, unfixed parking locations, large difficulty in parking spot arrangement and time-consuming parking.
The intelligent parking spot management technology can realize intelligent person-vehicle-parking spot management based on "front-end IoT acquisition equipment + vehicle information collection + intelligent software management system". It sets parking spot and parking spot number through lineation, embeds parking spot detector under the parking spot, detects the time of vehicle entering and leaving, uses network repeater to transmit information to the server to generate the parking space information, and allows the administrator to input license plate number via PC software/query machine to realize the vehicle position inquiry.
The intelligent detector is charged by the built-in solar panel, and starts work regularly when the power consumption is low. Theoretically, it can be used permanently without manual intervention. With die-cast aluminum alloy shell and metal support frame, it can withstand the attack from rain, dust and wind.
The intelligent parking management system is equipped with the global parking spot and vehicle status display system, which can realize intelligent parking spot and vehicle monitoring and scheduling management for the administrator, and present the three-dimensional information of the parking lot through multi-dimensional data, thus greatly improving the working efficiency of the administrator and vehicle chief.
V. Application of Macau Intelligent Tourism Guide
With the rapid development of Macao's tourism industry, the number of visitors to Macao increased from about 22 million to about 31 million from 2006 to 2016. The dramatic increase in visitors has also greatly increased the challenge to Macao in terms of reception capability. Due to unfamiliarity with the streets and scenic spots of Macao, most of visitors to Macao will only go to the famous scenic spots such as Ruins of St. Paul, Rosary Church and Avenida Almeida Ribeiro for the following two reasons. On the one hand, these landmarks are easily accessible and don't require much time or effort to find them; on the other hand, tourists basically have little knowledge of the features and locations of other attractions and are thus not interested in them.
At present, Macau's tourism information resources are very scattered, which is not conducive to the coordinated development of the tourism industry. In the construction of tourism informatization, it is important to improve the satisfaction of tourists and enhance the service quality of tour guides through information technology. However, tour guides can only rely on their personal ability to serve the group tourists, but cannot meet the needs of different tourists in different aspects in terms of introduction of scenic spots, tour guides and other tourism services. Independent travelers and self-service tourists can only gain too scattered tourism information via the Internet because Macao does not have a window of overall planning and information service for tourists.
Intelligent Tourism Guide is designed to develop WeChat mini programs and offer visitors pluralistic, timely and thoughtful services in combination with WeChat official account and subscription account. Such services include personalized route planning, personalized food recommendations, traffic guidance, introduction to featured attractions, online booking and on-call taxi services, attractions scoring function, user interaction release, etc.
VI. Hotel Face Recognition and Self-service Check-in
The identity check at the moment of check-in is not only to ensure the safety of the guests so that they can live in comfort and at ease, but also to reject those unacceptable visitors and timely contact the public security as the circumstances may require. Currently, the hotel industry is developing vigorously in Macao, but the shortage of human resources is an important obstacle in the journey of Macao to constantly improve service level of hotel industry and build the world tourism and leisure center. In order to further improve the service quality, relieve the pressure of human resources, and improve the accuracy and efficiency of identity verification, relevant companies of the Group will introduce the hotel face recognition and self-service check-in technology.
The basic mechanism of this technology is to place the identity document of the examinee on the certificate reading area of the check terminal, read the identity information in the certificate chip, and meanwhile capture the high-definition image of the person face, obtain the matching result in a second through the matching algorithm of facial recognition technology, and thus determine whether the examinee accords with the identity document (person-certificate identification technology). With this technology, we can check and verify the identity of guests rapidly and efficiently and truly realize integrated person-certificate identification.
The hotel face recognition and self-service check-in technology requires no peripheral equipment in the whole process, requires no manual intervention during the operation process, and can be used offline completely. In the online environment, the identity information and verification results of the examinee can be synchronized to the relevant server in real time, which only takes about 30 seconds. Therefore, with the face recognition and self-service check-in technology, the guests can deal with registration, check-in, extension and check-out independently and truly realize safe and efficient check-in. In addition, it can also solve the problems of inability to meet the privacy needs of guests in guest services and management, long waiting time for guests during peak hours, and the increasingly high labor costs.
VII. Application of Real-time Monitoring and Management Technologies of Dangerous Goods Vehicles
The application of Beidou satellite positioning, 3G/4G mobile communication technology, GIS map technology and video processing technology via the unified information platform can realize the location tracking, track playback, real-time video checking, excessive speed alarm, area monitoring, remote management of vehicles, video monitoring et al. of dangerous goods vehicles, improve the transportation enterprise’s real-time knowledge about conditions of the dangerous goods vehicles, discover potential security vulnerabilities in time, and prevent the occurrence of safety accidents. This technology can enhance the core competitiveness of the enterprises, and help transportation enterprises to rationally allocate resources, reduce operating expenses, improve service quality and improve economic benefits through informatization, intellectualization and standardization of management.
This technology can solve the problems such as the difficulty in post-departure supervision of dangerous goods vehicles and unstandardized and uncontrolled behaviors of operators, realize all-round monitoring of dangerous goods vehicles and prevent the occurrence of safety accidents; ensure that the operation process of dangerous goods vehicles is recorded; standardize the operation behavior of drivers of dangerous goods vehicles; provide convenience for the administrator to analyze the load condition of dangerous goods vehicles, optimize the scheduling, shorten the response time of customer demands, improve customer satisfaction, and save equipment and labor costs.