On May 24, Smart Zhenjiang ¨C Big Data Application Summit in Chinese and English was grandly held in ZHONGWAY Zhenjiang Science and Technology Industrial Park. 

More than 30 leaders, scholars and entrepreneurs such as chief big data analysis and technology officer of UNESCO, director of Data Analysis and Data Science Research Institute of University of Essex Professor Maria Farsi, Ms. Zheng Ruifeng from Nanjing Office of Essex, the UK, and the representatives from Zhenjiang Wisdom Office, Bureau of Commerce, Economic and Information Committee, Development and Reform Information Center, Planning Bureau, Science and Technology Bureau, International Investment Promotion Center, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology as well as iSoftStone, Jiangsu Xinzhongrui and Jiangsu Huajian gathered and jointly discussed the development of Smart Zhenjiang big data. 

Professor Maria Farsi comprehensively introduced the advanced achievements and applications made by University of Essex in the big data research field to the present leaders and experts. She introduced that the Government of the UK was making its utmost effort to promote the big data industry, had invested hundreds of millions of pounds in nearly one hundred government projects to carry out the application of big data technology and had relied on the institutions of higher education to invest in the establishment of the big data research center. 

She pointed out that the big data was permeating every aspect of the people¡¯s life and production, which came from different industries such as finance, business, insurance, architecture and municipal administration, and that the big data research team from University of Essex was committed to changing the existing living conditions through big data and had obtained 24,000,000 pounds from the Government of the UK and the funds to promote the research and application. They made use of big data to help the government to formulate the policies more conducive to the people¡¯s livelihood and obtained the actual effect and attracted more foreign investments for the UK. In practice, it was found that the use of big data might enable the governments and enterprises to improve their decision-making speed by 5 times and improve their execution efficiency by 3 times. In the construction of smart traffic, they guided the citizens to accept and actively use the new traffic system through big data forecasting. 

The government of Essex, the UK had established the friendly county-province relationship for 30 years with Jiangsu Province. Therefore, University of Essex selected Jiangsu Province as the first station of big data cooperation this time and had carried out cooperation with a company from Jiangsu. She hoped to be able to carry out the big data project research with more governments and enterprises in China to cultivate the big data talents and provide more enterprises with the big data analysis services, and she suggested that they should carry out the big data project cooperation with Zhenjiang City from the existing industries such as smart card and consumer goods to promote the smart city construction of Zhenjiang.