Citizens can take subways by scanning their faces in Guiyang. [Photo by Zhao Yandi/provided to China Daily]

Guiyang and Guian New Area in Southwest China's Guizhou province have applied big data to improve people's livelihoods.

As the core area of Guizhou's national big data comprehensive pilot area, Guiyang maintained high-quality development of the big data industry and achieved 164.9 billion yuan ($25.39 billion) of added value in the digital economy during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), occupying 38.9 percent of Guiyang's GDP.

According to Guiyang's government work report released in 2021, from 2016 to 2020, Guiyang had 117 big data enterprises above a designated size – those with annual sales of 20 million yuan or more. Meanwhile, the value of the telecommunication service industry was 87.31 billion yuan, and 85 percent of companies above a designated size used cloud computing services.

Focusing on big data applications for government use, commercial use and civil use, Guiyang has been devoted to exploring the potential of big data technology and making the city's public services more intelligent and convenient.

In the Shijicheng community in Guiyang's Guanshanhu district, traffic jams and parking problems troubled local residents for a long time. In 2015, Guizhou Chemi Technology Co developed a smartphone app to allocate spare parking spots.

With this app, users can share and book parking spots. Currently, the app has more than 450,000 users and covers about 300 parking lots in Guiyang.

Guiyang also uses big data to improve government service efficiency. With an online government affairs service platform, enterprises and individuals can quickly and conveniently apply for most government services online.

In the future, Guiyang will continue to integrate big data with its development and apply big data in more areas such as finance, logistics, tourism, trade, education and medical treatment.