Huawei Malaysia Champions Digital Twins and AI for Smarter Cities
- nabalunews
- 9 minutes ago
- 2 min read
23 September 2025
KUALA LUMPUR: Huawei Technologies (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd showcased its digital twin technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), and data governance as pivotal to the future of urban development at the Smart City Expo Kuala Lumpur 2025 (SCEKL25).
Officiated by Minister of Digital Gobind Singh Deo, the three-day exhibition brought together policymakers, technologists, and industry leaders to explore how digital innovation can address the challenges of rapid urbanisation.
Huawei Malaysia’s CEO, Simon Sun, reaffirmed the company’s long-term commitment to Malaysia’s digital transformation. “Together with our ecosystem partners, we aim to deliver advanced smart city solutions that enhance resilience and efficiency. These include traffic management, emergency dispatch, and flood response. Our goal is to optimise services and enable cities to sense, think, and evolve,” he said.
At the “Smart Cities 101” forum, Huawei’s Nicholas Yong discussed the evolution towards cognitive cities, emphasising the role of digital twins, virtual models of real-world scenarios created through sensor data, analytics, and AI. These enable city planners to manage urban environments more effectively, predict outcomes, and implement data-driven strategies to improve services and infrastructure.
“We are at the dawn of cognitive cities, where AI makes urban life more sustainable, personalised, and inclusive,” Yong explained.
Huawei’s Nadim Abdulrahim highlighted data governance as a crucial foundation for smart cities. “Successful smart cities rely on data governance, AI, and a robust city-wide data network,” he said in his keynote, “AI Cities: The Next Frontier?”. Abdulrahim noted that with AI adoption expected to reach 50% of the global population by 2025 and the market projected to grow to USD 10–15 trillion by 2030, leadership, regulation, and data sovereignty are vital for trust and resilience.
He stressed that without secure connectivity, cloud infrastructure, and unified data networks, smart city initiatives risk fragmentation and vulnerability. Securing ownership of critical assets—such as data centres and fibre networks, is key to ensuring digital resilience and economic competitiveness.
Huawei’s Pavilion at SCEKL25 demonstrated practical applications, including Safe City solutions, intelligent traffic management, flood control, green energy, parking, smart healthcare, and education. These solutions feed data into the Intelligent Operation Command Centre, a vital platform for both local and national urban management.
Held from 17 to 19 September, SCEKL25 was Southeast Asia’s first edition of the globally recognised Smart City Expo World Congress Barcelona, co-organised by MDEC and Digital Nasional Berhad for the Ministry of Digital.
