Alibaba Cloud and Sena Traffic Systems partner to end Malaysian traffic woes

• Alibaba Cloud to provide City Brain solution to Sena
• Sena to develop cloud-empowered traffic light systems

THERE are a lot of things in the world that could do with a hearty injection of intelligence, and one of them would be Malaysia’s notoriously horrible traffic. Perhaps the new collaboration between Alibaba Cloud (Alibaba Groups’ data intelligence arm) and smart traffic system controller Sena Traffic Systems could help.

Both companies recently announced a collaboration to build a smart traffic management system in Malaysia. It will utilise cloud-empowered smart technologies to “digitally transform the traffic management infrastructure in the city and has the potential to reduce travel time by 12%.”

“The smart traffic solution will constantly learn and adapt to changing traffic environments, making the traffic management system a smart learning platform and no longer just an analytic tool,” said Alibaba Cloud Intelligence International president Selina Yuan.

“The smart traffic solution and technology have the potential to improve traffic situation not just in Malaysia, but also in the Asean region. We will continue to empower all Malaysian stakeholders, in both the public and private sectors, with cloud-empowered technology to enhance efficiency, advance innovation and succeed in the digital age. Through this collaboration, Alibaba Cloud and Sena will also share the best practice with other regional partners.”

Putting a brain in traffic

As part of the partnership, Alibaba Cloud will be providing its City Brain solution as well as cloud computing resources and talent development programs. Sena, on the other hand, will be responsible for the design and development of traffic light systems, and implementation of its patented algorithm for the city traffic light system.

Reducing travel time and streamlining traffic requires a multi-pronged approach. During the announcement event, both parties showcased the capabilities that are essential for traffic management, which includes incident detection, congestion detection, vehicle counting, vehicle classification, traffic light optimisation and traffic simulation.

"Sena built Malaysia’s first smart traffic lights system and operated our smart traffic R&D lab. With our collaboration with Alibaba Cloud, Sena will have an even better and more complete solution to solve traffic congestion in urban landscapes,” Sena Traffic Systems managing director Tan Boon Hock said.

“We are eager to move rapidly beyond our current development plans for smart traffic and are already looking at exploring developments in several intelligent digital platforms for urban management systems such as street furniture controllers, IoT and smart city enterprise management together with Alibaba Cloud.”

This collaboration is just one part of Alibaba Cloud’s larger efforts at building a presence here in Malaysia. Alibaba Cloud set up its first local data centre in the country in 2017, and followed that with the creation of a second local data centre and an Anti-DDoS Scrubbing Centre last year.