Shanghai is to build China's first city grid - part of its ambitious plan to become one of the most advanced information cities in the world - with help from the US information giant International Business Machine (IBM), senior officials from both sides said yesterday.

Fan Xiping, director of the Shanghai Municipal Informatization Office, said the grid technology would enable the municipal government to integrate its information resources dispersed in different organizations and strengthen collaboration and information sharing. This will be invaluable for improving the efficiency of government and its emergency response speed.

Although Chinese scientific research institutions have conducted intensive studies in the field, it is the first time in China that grid technology will be applied to government.

"We are more than pleased to share our experience in research and application of grid technology in the effort to build Shanghai into a leading information city in the world," said Henry Chow, chairman and chief executive officer of IBM China.

IBM will send executives and engineers to co-operate with the Shanghai municipal government to draw up the blueprint for the development and support the project with its global grid technology resources.

The US giant also promised to train grid technology professionals for Shanghai and help it to become a leader in the development and application of it in the Asia-Pacific region by 2005.

The Shanghai municipal government and IBM will select one or two areas of public administration, such as a city emergency command system, intelligent transport control system or medical co-ordination system, for pilot projects.

Taiwan Province began using grid technology in May to help doctors from different hospitals view X-rays of more than 3,000 patients affected by SARS to share expert opinion diagnoses.

The US capital of Washington DC also built a grid network to share information relating to the fire service, police and traffic police with three neighbouring states to speed up responses to emergencies.

Besides international big names, domestic research organizations and companies are also paying more attention to advantages of grid technology.

Dawning Information Industry Co Ltd, the biggest domestic high-performance computer maker, has decided to use it in building the fastest supercomputer in China, the Dawning 4000A with a peak floating point operations per second of 10 tetrabytes.

"The grid technology represents the trend of future computing and the Dawning 4000A is only the beginning of our applications," said Li Jun, president of Dawning.

The co-operation agreement between Shanghai municipal government and IBM also said IBM would help Shanghai, the neighbouring Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces to train 250 software teachers and 5,000 software programmers and engineers through Shanghai Shenxin Information Technology Institute in three to four years.

With the launch of an online training programme and the execution of the second and third phases of the training co-operation, IBM will be able to give more help to Shanghai's efforts to develop its software industry.

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