City brain: practice of large-scale artificial intelligence in the real world

A city is an aggregate of a huge amount of heterogeneous data. However, extracting meaningful values from that data remains a challenge. City Brain is an end-to-end system whose goal is to glean irreplaceable values from big city data, specifically from videos, with the assistance of rapidly evolving artificial intelligence technologies and fast-growing computing capacity. From cognition to optimisation, to decision-making, from search to prediction and ultimately, to intervention, City Brain improves the way to manage the city, as well as the way to live in it. In this study, the authors introduce current practices of the City Brain platform in a few cities in China, including what they can do to achieve the goal and make it a reality. Then they focus on the system overview and key technical details of each component of the City Brain system, from cognition to intervention. Lastly, they present a few deployment cases of City Brain in various cities in China.