The Yellow River is one of the oldest and most complex rivers in the world. Flood control can be traced back to Dayu's flood control. In the past 23 years, the GDP of the entire Yellow River basin has increased by more than 7 times. Behind the development is inseparable from the Yellow River Basin. Construction of water conservancy projects.
Tao River is the largest tributary on the right bank of the upper reaches of the Yellow River. Lintao got its name from this. In 2023, Lintao, together with Baidu Smart Cloud and Gansu Dahe Technology Co., Ltd., jointly built the first county-level smart water conservancy platform in Gansu Province, starting the construction of digital, informatization, and intelligent water conservancy in Lintao County. Since then, Lintao County's water affairs management has had a "smart brain".
This is the story of them using AI to race against death and build a digital dam .
To prevent drowning , they race against death
"Saved!"
One early morning in June, the staff of Lintao County Water Affairs Bureau and the Baidu Smart Cloud project team excitedly shared the good news.
After receiving the AI monitoring alarm, the local police quickly went to the scene to carry out rescue
Fifteen minutes ago, a piercing alarm sounded from the Lintao Water Affairs Center, and the large monitoring screen showed a teenager wandering over the guardrail at the edge of the Zhongtian Bridge in the urban area. The staff on duty immediately contacted the public security department, and after patient persuasion by the police, the boy was finally pulled back to the safe zone.
What prevented this tragedy was the first domestic "artificial intelligence anti-drowning emergency rescue system" jointly built by Lintao Water Affairs Bureau and Baidu Smart Cloud.
Lintao is built on the Lintao River. The river runs through the entire urban area. Every year, there are drowning incidents. Some commit suicide, and some fall into the water. Most of the drowning victims are teenagers. In the past, manual inspections were relied on, and tragedy often happened when it was discovered.
The Tao River runs through the urban area of Lintao. The picture shows the Zhongtian Bridge in the center of the city
Due to the construction needs of the river and lake management section of the smart water conservancy platform, more than 200 intelligent monitoring systems were installed in the main stream, tributaries and reservoirs of the Tao River. When the monitoring access platform displayed high-definition images, the person in charge of the Lintao Water Affairs Bureau had a bold Thoughts - Can Baidu's technology prevent drowning?
"Even if we can save a baby, it is worthwhile for us to do this." This is the simplest original intention of the person in charge of Lintao Water Affairs.
The Baidu Smart Cloud project team responded quickly, building the anti-drowning system section of the platform, analyzing test data through AI video, and building an anti-drowning model. All work is progressing intensely as planned. However, before the product had time to be debugged and matured, a piece of news made everyone's hearts hang in their throats: a young life drowned and disappeared.
Faced with the loss of a life, the Baidu Smart Cloud production and research team felt for the first time that they were racing against death, and the formal implementation of the project must be accelerated.
After analysis, several frames of the surveillance video on the bridge at that time detected the person who committed suicide, but failed to reach the alarm threshold set by the project team. This involves a dilemma: normal pedestrians and tourists can easily trigger false alarms, and if false alarms are missed, high-risk issues are likely to be missed, causing the tragedy to repeat itself.
To solve this problem, model training with a large amount of high-quality scene data is required. In this project, data is the most scarce and most contradictory. In the early stage of the project, a lot of data from similar scenarios have been used, and AIGC has been used to generate a lot of data, but it still cannot cover the complex environment on site.
Time was running out, and the Baidu Smart Cloud project team decided to go into battle in person. The engineer fastened the safety rope, walked around all the corners of the bridge where the incident happened, and performed various actions, such as lying flat, leaning over, or tilting, leaving precious sample data. The algorithm strategy team monitors the dynamics of the scene in real time through the camera, and continuously sends out instructions to cover the position and posture of every possible boundary situation. "We cannot let an algorithmic boundary situation become a scar for a family." On the other hand, the delivery team sorted out and optimized the hierarchical early-warning plan that is connected with the water affairs bureau and the local public security system, and optimized the response path.
Engineers of the project team simulated the movements of drowning personnel to collect data
After the project team worked together, the new model effects and strategies finally achieved a breakthrough. In the early morning of June 23 , an alarm sounded, and the first life rescue of the anti-drowning system was successful. All the difficulties, anxiety, self-blame, regret, and hesitation experienced by the project team all ended with the return of a life intact.
Since June, the anti-drowning system has been officially launched on the Lintao Smart Water Conservancy Platform. It recognizes and warns of dangerous behaviors such as climbing over railings in urban rivers, approaching water flow, and wandering in dangerous areas at the first time. Provide rescue. The automated process of early warning discovery and notification to humans has been reduced to less than 10 seconds. It bought precious time for follow-up emergency response and rescue. Since the system went online , it has successfully prevented many high-risk behaviors.
To prevent floods , they build digital dams
"In the past, it was patrolled by people, but now it is patrolled by planes," said He Discipline, director of Yintao Engineering Construction Service Center in Lintao County, when he talked about the current river and lake governance.
Problems such as piles and dumps in the river can be found immediately through intelligent monitoring facilities. The Lintao Smart Water Conservancy Service Platform has realized a revolutionary change in Lintao's water management from traditional management to digital management.
Large screen of smart water conservancy dispatching center
On the large screen of the smart water conservancy dispatching center, the complicated and obscure water affairs data can be clearly presented through digitization. A few months ago, these data were still distributed in data tables, system interfaces, and even paper materials of different departments. Zhang Li, Baidu Smart Cloud Delivery Application Architect, still remembers the difficulties faced with scattered data when she first took over the project. Now, "the data that used to be manually counted for a month can be recorded and counted in real time through the platform", and the efficiency of water management has been greatly improved.
"The platform integrates Lintao water comprehensive information, digital twin maps, river and lake governance, urban and rural water supply and other functional sections, the core of which is the digital twin map," Zhang Li said. Through perception, transmission, calculation, modeling, simulation and other technologies, the entire Lintao water conservancy buildings such as dikes, dams, sluices, and culverts are displayed in 3D scenes, and the data of water conservancy facilities are connected in real time. After the platform has been digitized and informatized, the Lintao Water Affairs Bureau and the Baidu Smart Cloud project team began to explore a new intelligent application scenario—flood and drought disaster prevention.
Digital twin map of Lintao County urban area
Starting from late July, the northern region has entered the critical period of "seven downs and eight ups" flood control. Lintao County has a dense river network and well-developed water system, with 163 large and small rivers, facing very heavy pressure on flood control. During the flood season every year, Lintao County will be on duty 24 hours a day led by county leaders. Reservoir administrators and river chiefs at all levels will conduct manual inspections. The real-time measurement data of the county's reservoirs, rainfall stations, hydrological stations, and water level stations will be reported to the river and lake early warning information system.
Lintao County has dense river network and developed water system
In the past, the prediction of flood situation relied more on manual calculation. How to use the water conservancy brain to achieve intelligent flood control decision-making, precise mobilization, build digital dams , and protect the lives and property of the people in Lintao has become another difficult problem for the Lintao water project team to overcome following the drowning prevention system.
The Lintao smart water platform has undergone a comprehensive upgrade on the basis of the province's early warning information system for rivers and lakes. Integrated rainfall and water level video stations have been installed on 9 county-level rivers, and water level scales have been set up on four Taohe bridges. In the dispatch center, you can clearly see the actual flood situation of the main stream of the Tao River and 9 county-level rivers in the whole county.
He Xuexue showed us the operation process of the flood and drought disaster prevention system, "The picture you see now is the Haidianxia Reservoir. The flood warning line is 2002 meters. If the water level exceeds 2002 meters, the monitoring will find it and automatically alarm. After arriving at the dispatch center, we will issue a system order to keep it below the dangerous water level. After issuing the flood discharge order, we will notify the relevant people to avoid danger and pay attention to the safety of rivers and wading. If necessary, transfer the people in time and evacuation".
Digital Twin Modeling of Haidianxia Reservoir
In addition, through the digital twin modeling of Haidianxia Reservoir and Taohe City, combined with the rich artificial model preview of Baidu Smart Cloud, the whole process of rainfall, confluence and flood is simulated. The digital twin map demonstrates the formation of floods in the region, the passage of flood peaks, and the extent of flood submersion, forming big data on the evolution of Lintao's floods. "The flood evolution model helps our online flood control and flood control headquarters to conduct a practical simulation to achieve intelligent decision-making and precise mobilization," said He Xuexue.
flood evolution model
"Do you know how many river channels there are in Lintao?"
"The river network in our county is densely covered with well-developed water systems. There are 163 large and small rivers, including 1 provincial-level river, 9 county-level rivers, and 153 township-level rivers."
Lintao Digital Spokesperson "Diaochan"
This "staff" who knows Lintao's water affairs information well and answers questions fluently is called "Diaochan". She is Lintao, Diaochan's hometown. Now she has applied it to the popularization of Lintao's flood control and early warning knowledge to let the masses know the Lintao water conservancy situation, learn flood control knowledge, and enhance the masses' flood awareness and self-prevention awareness. Diaochan Digital Human will also be applied in Lintao government services, cultural tourism promotion, online live broadcasting and other aspects.
"Baidu's artificial intelligence technology has been fully applied in Lintao County's water affairs field and has achieved good results. In the future, we will copy this successful experience to the construction of smart cities in our county, and apply AI technologies such as large models to our county. All aspects of construction. Our county has launched a smart city construction plan with Baidu. In the future, the city will run smarter and smarter, and citizens’ lives will be more convenient,” said Gong Weilong, deputy county magistrate of Lintao County Government .