This photo shows a view of Chongqing Municipality, southwest China. (Photo/Xinhua)

Chongqing—On July 8, Chongqing launched its upgraded spatiotemporal infrastructure, Chongqing Spatio-Temporal Base 2.0, aiming to empower megacity governance and drive industrial development.

The Spatial-Temporal Digital Base is a city-wide digital twin platform that uses advanced technology to build a highly accurate 3D model of the city. It includes not only roads and streets but also the inside of public buildings. This digital model helps city officials manage and make decisions more precisely using data.

According to Xue Mei, Deputy Director of the Chongqing Academy of Surveying and Mapping, the version 1.0 used oblique photography to capture images of the city, the version 2.0 employs high-precision LiDAR to scan the city in fine detail—like giving it a full-body CT scan—and creates a highly detailed 3D digital model of the city.

So far, version 2.0 has mapped over 6,000 kilometers of roads and 110,000 buildings across Chongqing's central districts through high-precision 3D scanning. This has resulted in a rich, spatio-temporally linked dataset that allows AI systems to understand, analyze, and simulate the physical world, advancing the city's push toward digital-physical integration and industrial transformation.

For example, at the newly opened Chongqing East Railway Station—the largest high-speed rail hub in western China—Spatio-Temporal Base 2.0 digitally replicated more than 1.2 million square meters of complex infrastructure and over 100,000 pieces of equipment. The platform supported critical tasks such as final inspections, facility layout optimization, and emergency planning, helping ensure the station's timely launch and safe operations.

"The deep integration with spatio-temporal intelligence allows our smart vehicles to access more data, making them smarter, more energy-efficient, more comfortable, and more personalized," said a representative from Changan Automobile. 

"For example, in the past, drivers had to manually steer around a pothole. In the future, with the help of spatio-temporal technologies, vehicles will be able to sense and respond to road conditions in real time—adjusting automatically to avoid hazards and making driving safer."

Version 1.0 was integrated into Chongqing's urban operations and governance center. It covered 1,031 towns and subdistricts, supported 87 municipal departments and 38 application scenarios, and precisely mapped data from 700,000 roadside cameras and 68 million information points.

"If version 1.0 was built for people, then version 2.0 is made for machines," Xue said. With its ability to help AI systems interpret real-world physical and spatiotemporal relationships, Spatio-Temporal Base 2.0 is expected to drive applications across industries. By integrating massive datasets from various sectors, the platform also provides learning material for AI at the level of basic science, part of Chongqing's broader push to become a leading hub for artificial intelligence.

(Gou Long, as an intern, also contributed to this report.)