By outdoor-nature-child.com “To the east of Liyuanpo Village along Ishii Street, we detected potential waste piles,” reported a warning on the screen of the Digital Qinling Comprehensive Supervision Platform in Xi’an’s Hu Y District, Shaanxi Province.
Zhao Na, a staff member at the platform, quickly contacted Mao Juan, the grid worker in charge of the area. “The drone patrol returned images, and our AI analysis flagged some illegal dumping issues,” Zhao explained.
In under an hour, Mao Juan arrived at Liyuanpo Village and found that some residents were renovating their homes, leaving construction waste along the roadside. She promptly took photos for documentation, uploaded them using her phone, and alerted the local street office. By the next morning, after the waste was cleared, she returned to verify the cleanup and submitted her findings to the platform, successfully completing the resolution process.
Covering approximately 55% of the city, the Qinling Ecological Protection Zone in Xi’an spans six districts. The speedy resolution of issues like this is facilitated by an integrated “Sky, Earth, and People” environmental monitoring and protection system.
“With satellites regularly providing remote sensing images, drones making daily patrols, real-time monitoring through cameras, and 1,240 dedicated grid workers on duty, we have eyes watching over every corner of the Qinling Mountains,” said Lei Bo, director of the Technology Information and Grid Management Office at the Xi’an Qinling Ecological Environment Protection Administration.
In the first eight months of this year alone, the platform independently identified and resolved 2,480 issues related to illegal construction and waste dumping, typically achieving a resolution time of just one to three days.
The proactive approach to these environmental challenges aligns with the policy recommendations from the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which called for “region-specific, differentiated, and precise ecological management policies, along with developing robust monitoring and evaluation systems.” Xi’an has been continuously enhancing its systemic and long-term protection measures for the Qinling, integrating human oversight with technology for coordinated grid and network management.
“We visualize the mountains on a comprehensive map that includes data on forests, rivers, buildings, and mineral distribution, creating a ‘digital sandbox’ for the Qinling,” officials noted.
“Our approach to maintaining the mountains relies on a unified network. Each village has a grid system with at least one designated worker, forming a four-tier management structure that spans the city, districts, towns, and villages.”
“Our platform merges city-level, district-level, and several departmental systems, facilitating information sharing and data connectivity, which culminates in a large-scale Digital Qinling supervision platform,” explained a representative.
“With thermal, smoke, and light sensors working in concert, we can detect even the smallest spark from a lighter,” added Huan Yiping, head of the Hu Y District Qinling Ecological Environment Protection and Integrated Law Enforcement Bureau. The application of the Digital Qinling Comprehensive Supervision Platform is expanding to various scenarios, including forest fire prevention, flood mitigation, water quality monitoring, and geological disaster surveillance.
Currently, the populations of wild species in the Qinling region are increasing, with 99.3% of the ecological environment in the Shaanxi section rated as excellent.
“In the future, we plan to enhance the automation, intelligence, and precision of our efforts to protect the Qinling, improve our regulatory framework, and continue dynamic inspection and remediation,” stated Li Bo, a member of the Party Committee and deputy director of the Xi’an Qinling Ecological Environment Protection Administration.