Shanghai's Pudong New Area announced the inauguration of a data engineering center and BIM & 3DGIS public service platform on July 5, marking the latest achievements of the area's smart city construction.

The integration of BIM, or Building Information Modeling, and 3DGIS, or 3D geographic information system, will greatly contribute to smart city construction.

Backed by Pudong science and economy commission, the two new organizations were jointly initiated by nine institutions including East China Normal University, Shanghai Industrial Technology Institute, Shanghai Sany Tech Co, and Shanghai Ideal Information Industry (Group) Co.

The data engineering center will focus on the integration of data resources, data application, the establishment of big data industrial standards, and the optimization of the industrial environment.

It aims to be a resource integrator and innovation driver of Shanghai's, and even the whole country's big data engineering sector, turning Pudong into a big data hub.

The BIM & 3DGIS platform functions as the information infrastructure of a smart city and forms an important part of smart city operation and management.

This platform in Pudong, the first of its kind in China, will concentrate on uniting the area's BIM data resources and promoting BIM & 3DGIS innovation and application.

It will also work on building a Cloud Pudong featuring 3D visualization, real-time sensing, data-driven smart operation.

Zhang Aiping, deputy director of Pudong science and economy commission, said that Pudong has laid a good foundation for the big data industry. The newly-established center will use the advantages to improve Pudong's big data application and further advance the development of the industry.