The 2018 Feifeng Data Innovation—World Internet of Things (IoT) Data Innovation Contest is being held in Wuxi from July 9 to Sept 16. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The 2018 Feifeng Data Innovation - World Internet of Things (IoT) Data Innovation Contest is being held in Wuxi from July 9 to Sept 16.

The contest is hosted by the Administrative Commission of the Wuxi Hi-tech district and the Tianchi Competition led by Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing subsidiary of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group.

"Starting on July 19, 1,036 competitors in 636 teams from home and abroad have been taking part in the competition, of which 50 teams are included in the semi-final," said Liu Jun, manager of the Tianchi Competition during the press conference on Aug 23.

"The prize pool is 430,000 yuan ($ 62,565) and projects that make it into the final are likely to share a total investment of 5 million yuan," Liu added.

The final race will be held on Sept 16 in Wuxi, during the 2018 World Interet of Things Exposition.

Teams engaged in data modeling from across the world are taking part in the event. They come up with solution plans for the construction of smart cities based on real-time data provided by Feifeng platform, a data system co-developed by Wuxi’s Xinwu district and Alibaba Group.

The contest displays the functions of the platform in urban administration and the advantages of Wuxi's IoT towns as the industrial and technological center of the IoT in order to attract more talents, technologies, enterprises and capital.

Located in Wuxi's Hi-tech district, the State-owned Ixinwu Company supports the data collection and application of the Feifeng platform. [Photo by Cai Mengqi/chinadaily.com.cn]

As a world-leading open platform of the IoT and the carrier of Alibaba Cloud's initiative of smart cities, the Feifeng platform can help participants picture the realities of cities and analyze their features through interconnected data.

With a theme of "smart cities", the contest focuses on application development on the Feifeng platform and real-time data analysis of Hongshan and Huihaiwan IoT towns. Participants are required to visually demonstrate the value of various urban data in urban government affairs, tourism and industries.

Tianchi Competition took the opportunity to host the data contest since Hu Xiaoming, president of Alibaba Cloud, announced the company's expansion into the IoT field. The contest has achieved abundant data with excellent tools and topics that are closely related to life, said a Tianchi Competition representative.