(Yicai Global) Jan. 29 -- Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., announced the start today of its Malaysia City Brain initiative in collaboration with the Malaysia Digital Economy Corp. (MDEC), the country's digital economy development agency, and Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (DBKL), the city council of the capital, at a ceremony held there.

The initiative is the first overseas adoption of the City Brain solution which will support Malaysia's digital transformation with cloud technology and artificial intelligence. The setup analyzes data from diverse urban sources via video and image recognition, data mining and machine learning.

Kuala Lumpur will use the system in traffic management in phase one. City Brain optimizes vehicle flow and stop signals by generating data summaries of traffic volume and speed to facilitate incident detection. Real-time data analysis lets the system optimize vehicle flow by picking the quickest route for responders to travel to hotspots.

"Cloud computing, data technology and AI have become fundamental tools for all companies and organizations to operate effectively. Building on this partnership, we are happy to see Malaysia become the first country outside China to adopt the City Brain. Through the program, we aim to empower all Malaysian stakeholders in both the public and private sectors with the tools to enhance efficiency, advance innovation and succeed in the digital age," said Simon Hu, Alibaba Group's senior vice president and president of Alibaba Cloud. "Collaboration with Alibaba is another leap towards digitizing Malaysia where knowledge-sharing and the crossover of best practices transpire. As we set our sights on the future, we are excited about the prospects this partnership will bring to our community and benefiting Malaysians with the tangible results of digital solutions," said Dato' Yasmin Mahmood, MDEC's chief executive.