Dubai, UAE, September 22, 2018:  Sören Link, Mayor of Duisburg, Germany, has lead a 19-person government delegation to visit Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China. The visit which took place from September 3 to 4, aims to deepen their cooperation in smart city development. Their cooperation will focus on transforming Duisburg from a traditional industrial city into a service-oriented smart city through smart government, smart port logistics, smart education, smart infrastructure, 5G and broadband, smart homes, and urban IoT. 

Huawei and Duisburg Jointly Build an Open and Cooperative International Ecosystem for Smart Cities

As the European economic hub of the Belt and Road Initiative, Duisburg has the world’s largest inland port and is the business and logistics center connecting Europe and China. The cooperation between Huawei and Duisburg is based on building an open and cooperative international ecosystem. In January 2018, Duisburg and Huawei signed a Memorandum of Understanding, announcing they will work together to build a digital benchmark city, where its e-Government infrastructure will be driven by cloud computing, and its smart city nervous system network will be an IoT network powered by 5G and other connection technologies. At CEBIT held in Germany in June 2018, Huawei and Duisburger Versorgungs- und Verkehrsgesellschaft mbH (DVV) signed a Framework Agreement on the “Rhine Cloud” – the brand name of a smart city and public service cloud platform – and Smart City services, enabling Duisburg to move towards its goal of becoming a smart city. 

During their visit to Shenzhen, the Duisburg government delegation was invited to tour Huawei’s Exhibition Hall within its headquarters. The Hall includes demos of smart city implementations, IoT solutions, and cloud data center networks, and will show how these solutions can help Duisburg achieve its vision to accelerate societal and economic transformation. The delegation had also visited the command center of the Longgang District of Shenzhen, which Huawei helped to construct, to experience real-life smart city management applications, such as incident assignment, cross-agency emergency collaboration, risk monitoring, data sharing, decision-making support, quality checking, and visualization of data. 

In addition, the delegation had visited experience centers operated by two Huawei partners – smart drone company EHang, Inc. and BYD Company Ltd. The delegation is piloting EHang’s self-driving craft for passengers, which is a 5G-based next-generation vehicle, as well as SkyRail, BYD’s latest achievement in rail transportation.

In the future, Huawei and its partners will provide Duisburg with leading expertise and solutions in 5G LTE technology and wireless broadband networks. This will significantly promote the development of Duisburg in areas such as self-driving vehicles, smart logistics, and Industry 4.0. 

Mayor Sören Link said:”We’re happy to work with Huawei to transform Duisburg to a smart city. We’ve had lots of exciting projects during the process of working with Huawei which inspired us in our work. Duisburg already has a tight connection with China. Through the cooperation with Huawei, such partnership with China grows even stronger.”

Yu Dong, President of Industry Marketing and Solution Department of Huawei Enterprise BG said: 'This is a future-oriented and long-term cooperation between Huawei and Duisburg. Huawei provides converged, innovative, open, and reliable platform technologies required for building smart cities, as well as rich construction experience and localized implementation capabilities that have been applied in more than 120 cities around the world. We strive to transform Duisburg into an innovative and digital benchmark city in Western Europe, improving urban life quality, as well as enhancing the confidence of citizens, enterprises, and investors. We also aim to turn Duisburg into a new and open smart city ecosystem for global investors, suppliers, and partners.'

Huawei Builds a Smart City Nervous System for Duisburg

At the cloud computing infrastructure layer, the “Rhine Cloud” supported by Huawei’s technologies provides a basic platform for Duisburg’s cloud strategy. It also promotes the technical innovation and implementation of e-Government, transportation, IoT, and unified communications, and completes the construction of Smart Duisburg 1.0 based on a smart foundation.

At the IoT layer, Duisburg will use Huawei’s 5G, Wi-Fi, and WLAN technologies and IoT platforms to achieve real-time sensing of city components. A smart city nervous system network will be built to advance transportation, logistics, and industrial manufacturing, enabling smart living, autonomous driving and smart city operations. This will help realize the Smart Duisburg 2.0 vision based on smart experiences. 

This visit does not only further economic and trade cooperation between China and Germany, it also creates more commercial benefits and a broader cooperation space for enterprises from both countries.