Global EditionASIA 中文雙語Fran?ais
    China
    Home / China / Society

    Tech firms help reunite homeless with families

    By Li Lei | China Daily | Updated: 2019-06-20 07:59
    Share
    Share - WeChat

    Employees at a homeless shelter in Guangdong province asked for help from a popular news aggregator, toutiao.com, to locate the family of a mentally ill man long stranded at the facility earlier this month.

    Using geo positioning, the app, which has millions of followers nationwide, quickly sent out tens of thousands of notifications to users in the southeast of the province to see if anyone knew him. The employees at the Dongguan Relief Station believed the man was from the region. His suspected name as well as those of his parents were included in the message.

    Hours later, a call came in saying the man, who had been at the shelter for about 20 months, was their relative Liu Shen, who had gone missing 20 years ago.

    Liu is one of many longtime shelter residents who have been reunited with their families, thanks to the assistance of tech firms such as ByteDance, which owns toutiao.com and streaming platform Douyin, and tech giant Baidu.

    According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, toutiao.com has sent out almost 37,000 notifications since the ministry signed up the app in 2016 to help trace people. A total of 7,456 cases have been concluded successfully.

    Baidu, a Chinese pioneer in artificial intelligence, launched a program last year with the ministry to identify long-term shelter residents using its facial-recognition technology.

    The company has since compared the facial images of more than 200,000 people with a database provided by the ministry and the public security authorities, consisting of the personal data of those reported missing by relatives.

    The ministry said almost 6,500 people have been reunited with their families so far, reducing the burden on publicly funded relief stations intended to provide temporary shelter of usually less than 10 days.

    The efforts have helped longtime shelter residents - mostly seniors or people with special educational needs who failed to offer adequate information and ended up stranded in the facilities - return home more quickly.

    Zhou Da, who oversees the Baidu Foundation and the company's charitable initiatives, said the company's technology has in some instances been more effective than human efforts to identify people.

    "The system can even tell the difference between almost all seemingly identical twins," he said.

    Fewer stranded residents have helped reduce management risks, slashed public funding by billions of yuan, and helped ease the shelters' pressure against the backdrop of the central government cutting many positions in the government reshuffle early this year.

    Lin Jiawei, a social worker at the shelter in Dongguan who oversaw Liu Shen's return, said the support from tech giants had accelerated the home-return process and reduced problems at the centers such as overcrowding and lack of funding.

    "Longtime shelter-seekers, mostly seniors with dementia or people with mental problems, have to share rooms in groups of seven or eight, which is worrisome given the limited staff at government funded relief stations," he said.

    Lin added that there were almost 150 shelter-seekers whose stay exceeded three months when he began working there in September. But the number was down to about 90 at the end of May, with many sent home with assistance from the tech firms.

    The Ministry of Civil Affairs said there were 34,805 people in shelters as of May, compared with almost 50,000 in 2017.

    A total of 5 billion yuan ($722 million) in public funds had been saved over the last four years, it said.

    Top
    BACK TO THE TOP
    English
    Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
    License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

    Registration Number: 130349
    FOLLOW US
     
    夜夜添无码试看一区二区三区| 欧美激情中文字幕| 亚洲欧美日韩中文字幕一区二区| 免费看又黄又无码的网站 | 成在人线AV无码免观看麻豆| 最近中文字幕免费大全| 五月婷婷无码观看| 久久av无码专区亚洲av桃花岛| 特级做A爰片毛片免费看无码 | 亚洲AV永久无码精品一区二区| 日韩精品无码AV成人观看| 中文字幕无码一区二区三区本日| 日本中文字幕在线| 精品国产毛片一区二区无码| 无码精品人妻一区二区三区人妻斩| 中文字幕一区二区三区在线不卡| 色综合久久中文综合网| 亚洲中文字幕无码一久久区| 天堂AV无码AV一区二区三区| 国产成人无码免费看片软件 | 日韩精品无码一区二区三区免费 | 亚洲日韩精品一区二区三区无码| 久久精品一区二区三区中文字幕| 熟妇人妻VA精品中文字幕| 中文字幕aⅴ人妻一区二区| 午夜成人无码福利免费视频| 无码人妻少妇伦在线电影| 88国产精品无码一区二区三区| 东京热加勒比无码少妇| 69ZXX少妇内射无码| 国产强伦姧在线观看无码| 6080YYY午夜理论片中无码| 高清无码在线视频| 国产精品无码无卡无需播放器 | 国产亚洲情侣一区二区无码AV| 久久久久亚洲av无码专区导航| 少妇伦子伦精品无码STYLES| 欧洲成人午夜精品无码区久久| 精品无码无人网站免费视频| 岛国av无码免费无禁网| 亚洲中文字幕无码一去台湾|