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Beijing update meeting
Ben Bedwell met with Yan Hongyan and colleagues from China Mobile, and Chang Le (University of Nottingham) at China Mobile Research in Beijing to address the points for clarification following the [Cambridge meeting](Cambridge introduction meeting).
Discussion determined that Big Cloud consists of 1000+ China Mobile machines available to both commercial and internal applications, providing both shared storage and scalable processing. Its commercial release was very recent (a month previously) and therefore there was not a huge commercial take-up as yet. As there was not a member of staff present who actively worked on Big Cloud, Yan suggested that interested members of Horizon could contact a relevant member of staff through her via email if necessary.
Following the [Cambridge meeting](Cambridge introduction meeting), Yan passed on her OPhone to Ian Leslie to allow Cambridge to explore the device prior to delivery of more OPhones. There appears to have been some confusion over the responsibility for development in C-Aware, with China Mobile agreeing to pass on this initial phone and the subsequent 10 phones to Cambridge for development. Ben stated that he would need OPhones for development and that he would arrange with Cambridge to more effectively distribute any OPhones delivered by China Mobile.
Both China Mobile and Ben revealed concerns over the applications as decided at the [Cambridge meeting](Cambridge introduction meeting). A key factor in the decisions made was the unknown state of China Mobile’s M2M. The discussion in Beijing helped greatly in clarifying this, with China Mobile stating clearly what M2M was, and giving a number of concrete examples of M2M in existing large-scale use.
From China Mobile’s perspective M2M consists of a set of standards (including the Wireless M2M Protocol (WMMP)) provided to 3rd-party sensor developers who have already designed and manufactured a wide range of M2M sensors. These 3rd-party (but standard) sensors communicate with an M2M module over wireless networks (e.g. Zigbee); the module contains a China Mobile SIM, allowing for communication over the mobile network of the sensor data to remote applications. As such, currently China Mobile does not currently operate M2M services outside of China. To clarify that M2M applications were well-established, several existing applications for M2M in China were discussed. Large-scale applications include Elevator Guard which uses sensors in lifts to alert maintenance companies to work that needs to be carried out, and the large-scale use of GPS M2M sensors in (100,000+) commercial vehicles (e.g. taxis) in Guandong province to allow more efficient dispatch/routing. Importantly, it was suggested that it may be difficult to develop applications involving sensing of electricity usage as (state-owned) China Grid are already responsible for this in China.
Following the discussion of M2M, Yan also clarified what customer data would be usable for the applications, making it clear that the regulations on how cell-ID and billing data could be used are essentially as strict as in the UK, and that any customer data would need to be explicitly released by the customer. This means that it is likely that any data would need to be gathered by the mobile phone, or M2M infrastructure, not from China Mobile’s customer records.
With these points in mind, from China Mobile’s perspective (also expressed previously to Ian) a focus on an individual’s energy use would be less relevant to the China market, while applications to reveal energy use/emissions to industry would be more exciting, particularly as there is strong government pressure on industry to become more energy/emission aware. Ben’s other meetings during his China trip (with academics in University of Nottingham Ningbo (UNNC and Beijing) also raised similar sentiments:
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In UNNC there is a strong set of expertise in environmental issues (in manufacturing and other areas) – this is a priority area for the university, and academics already have links with local businesses for whom they carry out advisory and environmental auditing roles. UNNC is aiming to put in place a group similar to the ETC in University of Nottingham UK to capitalise on the opportunities to carry out such services commercially in China.
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Energy is heavily subsidised in China, and energy production is rapidly becoming more efficient, meaning that for the middle-class individual energy consumer and for industry cost is less of an issue than it may be in the UK. However, there is great pressure on China to reduce emissions, and this pressure is passed on to industry rather than to individuals. Poorer individuals are already strongly aware of energy use and take all possible measures to reduce it.
Given these points, both Yan and Ben suggested that a stronger focus should be put on an application using situated sensors for monitoring energy/emission-related behaviour in buildings.
An overview of an on-site energy monitoring application was produced by China Mobile. The slides can be found here.
Such an application would involve using M2M sensors to monitor appliances and people within a building, aggregating the resulting data, then presenting this back to the owner (via a web UI) and maintainers of the building (possibly remotely via mobile) to allow changes to be made to the use of the building. While it has been suggested that this type of application would be more immediately relevant to the workplace in China, it would be applicable to both industry (from an office building to a factory) and to the home.
Of particular interest would be an element of cross-comparison (e.g. comparison of one workplace’s energy use to other similar workplaces to encourage competition to reduce energy use) and larger-scale aggregation of data collected (e.g. analysis of industry-wide data for use in governmental policy-making).
Development of this application could draw on:
- China Mobile’s experience of operating M2M/knowledge of existing M2M applications
- UNNC’s/ETC’s experience of evaluating energy use/emissions in the workplace
- University of Nottingham Built Environment’s experience with deploying sensors in buildings
- Ben’s experience in MRL Homework project of developing applications for monitoring/visualising home network use Within the time-frame of the C-Aware project China Mobile (new research building), University of Nottingham UK (Horizon building? Etc.) and UNNC (new research building) all plan to build new workplace buildings – this would seem to be a good opportunity to carry out a field trial of application 1 across a range of two or three newly-built sites, allowing the cross-comparison features of the application to be tested.
Given that China Mobile’s customer data is not readily available, and that similar work to that of the previously proposed application 1 is set to be carried out in Horizon’s Car Sharing project, it would seem that the most suitable application to develop in C-Aware would be a mobile data logging client that could produce data to then be mined. This would seem to be less relevant to the target consumers in China, as travel is very cheap, and the environmental concerns of the individual are relatively low. Given that a field-trial of the newly-proposed application 1 now seems to be a feasible proposition, Ben and Yan have both queried the need to develop application 2, beyond exploring the concept. It may also be the case that a travel data-logger is developed and deployed as part of the Car Sharing project.
Action points:
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Immediately determine whether application 2 can be considered an exploration of concept, with a focus on development of application 1 for a cross-site field trial
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Horizon and China Mobile to produce a clear application specification and development timeline by end of July
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Complete development/signing of NDA
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Determine how costs of field trial in China would be covered