On October 28, 2019, the first Beijing University of Technology “Linking Belt and Road, Bonding Tech and Heart” International Academic Conferences – 2019 International Forum on Intelligent Connected Roads & Sino-Dutch Smart City Forum was successfully held in Beijing University of Technology. The event was jointly organized by Beijing University of Technology and Vrije University Amsterdam, and undertaken by BJUT’s very own department, Beijing Institute of Smart City. The forum is based on the theme of “Smarter Road, Smarter City, More Convenient Life”. More than 200 scholars from Canada, the Netherlands, Peru, Belt & Road countries, domestic universities, research institutes and industrial experts gathered together to exchange ideas, promote consensus, and work together to innovate and develop smart cities. The chairman of the conference was Lin Shaofu, Executive Vice President of Beijing Institute of Smart City of Beijing University of Technology. The international president is Huang Zhisheng, Lifelong Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Vrije University Amsterdam.

BJUT President & Deputy Party Secretary Liu Gonghui delivered the welcome speech, and Vice President Wu Bin presided over the opening ceremony. President Liu expressed a warm welcome and heartfelt thanks to all the experts, scholars and students who participated in the forum, and introduced the basic situation of the school;

“I hope to take this forum as an opportunity to build a “one belt and one way” smart city academic exchange and collaborative innovation platform for production, learning, research and open minds. To expand academic resources, gather scientific and technological talents and push the first-class discipline construction and internationalization level of the school to a higher level.”

On behalf of Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, the Bureau’s Deputy Director Pan Feng expressed warm congratulations on the opening of the forum and affirmed Beijing University of Technology’s active participation in the development of information technology and support for the construction of smart cities. Director Pan illustrated that building an intelligent transportation system is a long-term and arduous project based on the current situation of Beijing’s urban governance, such as traffic congestion control and smooth transportation. Beijing is carrying out the construction of Beijing big data “Dinghaishenzhen” – government data directory chain, and the construction of urban computing system based on Kunpeng ecology of Huawei. It is hoped that industrial, academic and research institutions, including Beijing University of Technology, will actively participate in, conduct in-depth research and jointly promote the construction of the smart city, so as to realize “Smarter Road, Smarter City, More Convenient Life”.

This forum includes four sub forums, namely, the theme forum and Intelligent Connected Roads Sub-Forum, Sino-Dutch Smart City Sub-Forum, Artificial Intelligence Sub-Forum, Digital Economy and Digital Transformation Sub-Forum, including group discussion, round table and other forms. The participants mainly focus on the development prospect of solving practical intelligent connected roads, intelligent transportation, intelligent health, intelligent disability assistance, enterprise digital transformation and other related problems by means of intelligent technology. The forum is intended to lead to further in-depth exchanges and discussions on the application of innovation, and actively promote the research and construction development of the intelligent networking road.

Professor Susan Tighe, academician of the Academy of Sciences, University of Waterloo, Canada; Professor Huang Zhisheng, lifelong professor of artificial intelligence department, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Dai Lianjun, Director of Information Center of China Disables Persons’ Federation; Liu Xu, Director of Division of Big Data Construction (Division of Smart City Construction), Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology; Su Yuelong, Alibaba senior data analysis expert, joint experiment of future traffic and urban computing of goldmap, etc. Nearly 30 experts, director of the office, made academic reports on “artificial intelligence and mental health, smart Beijing and smart travel”, shared their research results and prospects, thus bringing a high-level academic extravaganza for participants. The theme of the forum report covers the innovation chain and industrial chain of academic research, scientific and technological research and development, scenario application and industrial innovation and development, which will play a large role in promoting the combination of government, industry, applied research and promoting the exchange and cooperation of interdisciplinary and cross-border integration at home and abroad.

During the meeting, representatives from BJUT’s Beijing Institute of Smart City, Intelligent Transportation System China, and Beijing Yunxingyu Traffic Technology Ltd. jointly signed the agreement on jointly building the Joint Laboratory of “intelligent road networking”, and unveiled the “intelligent road networking collaborative innovation laboratory” which was the first to be built in China.

At this point, “Linking Belt and Road, Bonding Tech and Heart” International Academic Conferences have successfully held five international conferences in the fields of economic management, mathematical physics, material science, smart city and other fields. Further international academic conferences will be held in succession, including low-carbon city development forum, mainly focusing on urban construction, environment and energy and other fields.