Electronic inspection system put into operation on Great Wall of China
By Shi
Fang, Bi Mengying, People’s Daily
Emergency
and abnormality detection for the Great Wall, located in mountainous areas, has
long been a tricky issue, but now an electronic inspection system is changing
history.
Beijing’s
Huairou District, home to sections of the Great Wall, recently equipped each of
its 131 conservators with an electronic device that reports their locations
every two minutes. With the device, the conservators can also report problems
they spot by sending photos to relevant departments of cultural relics.
The system
proved its value soon after its debut. On June 2, it added a new piece of
cultural relic - a pedestal - to the collection of the Huairou Museum.
The
pedestal was spotted by conservator Li Binglong in the bushes near the Great
Wall when he was on patrol. He soon took a photo and reported his finding to
relevant authorities, as instructed during the training.
“This machine
came in very handy. Li and I immediately uploaded a photo of the pedestal when
we found it. Soon we received a call from the head of Huairou’s cultural
heritage authority, and the pedestal was sent to the Huairou Museum,” said Li
Linyuan, a Great Wall conservator in Huairou’s Yanxi township.
Shen Wei,
one of the developers of the system, introduced that the location and patrol
route of every conservator on duty in Huairou district is shown by the system
in real time on a big screen of the command center. With the system, each
township in the district can have a grasp of the conservators’ work and receive
the information they transmit.
“It was
very hard to find scribbling, damages to the walls or injured hikers in the
past as we always spent a huge amount of time negotiating with conservators
over the locations. Sometimes we couldn’t find these locations without the
conservators leading the way,” said Guo Dapeng, deputy director
of Huairou Cultural Commission. “Thanks to this system, we can now
get to the accurate location very quickly,” he said.
“The
system also protects the conservators, as it enables us to know exactly where
they are if an accident happens during the patrol in the perilous mountains,”
Guo added.
Besides,
the system also serves as a real-time messenger for conservators in the same
town. “We can inform our colleagues instantly when off-route tourists head to
other directions,” said Wang Guijiang, a conservator of Dazhenyu village, Bohai
township.
Equipped
with this new instrument, conservators now patrol in key areas on a regular
basis, and the photos they upload will form a data base that helps future Great
Wall reservation.
“If I find
a crack in the wall, I can take a picture of it every day to keep track of it, see
if it’s getting bigger,” said Wang.
More
functions of the system are to be expected in the future, such as alarming and
video calls, which helps the
conservators to handle emergencies such as forest fires and floods together
with other departments.
Photo
shows the pedestal of the Great Wall found by Li Binglong. Photo: courtesy of Beijing
Daily
Electronic inspection system put into operation on Great Wall of China
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