The prototype family of "Dear" reunited! There may also be news about lost children in your mobile navigation

On December 6, 2021, Sun Haiyang, the prototype of the movie "Dear", finally reunited with his son who had been separated for 14 years. Sun Haiyang and his wife hugged and cried with their son, which moved countless people to tears.

In the face of these sad experiences, can we do something to help missing children return home?

Liu Kaikui, a technical volunteer of Alibaba's Reunion Charity Project and a senior algorithm expert of AutoNavi Business Group, shared the story of "reunion" in his speech "Using Internet Technology to Reunite Missing Children with Their Families."

The "Tuanyuan" system is where the police release missing child information, and the data is updated in real time. The data in this article is as of September 5, 2019. As of May 15, 2021, "Tuanyuan" has released 4,801 missing children information and found 4,707 children, with a recovery rate of 98.1%.

The following is the transcript of Liu Kaikui’s speech:

2019.9.14 Beijing

I’m Liu Kaikui, from Alibaba AutoNavi Maps.

My main job is to use big data and artificial intelligence to empower traffic navigation and make travel better. For example, from point A to point B, different users have different needs for routes. Some want to take the highway to save time, while others don't want to take the highway to save money. Our job is to find out the needs of each user and plan a route he likes.

Speaker Liu Kaikui: "Using Internet technology to help missing children reunite with their families"

Today I don't want to introduce my main work, but I want to talk about the "Reunion" charity project that I am involved in at Alibaba. We do this project to help find more missing children and reunite them with their families.

Mr. Ma Yun often told us that the “bigness” of a big company does not refer to high revenue, high profits, or large market share, but to its great responsibility and commitment. People hope that you can take on greater responsibilities and make greater contributions to society.

On September 10, 2015, Mr. Jack Ma proposed an idea: He hoped that everyone in Alibaba would do at least three hours of charity work every year. So many colleagues picked up trash on the streets or in parks, and some went to nursing homes to do charity work. We wondered if we could do some charity work for the society through technology.

I have seen a movie called "Silent Explosion" before, which tells the story of a miner father Zhang Baomin who was looking for his lost child. He posted missing person notices in the streets and alleys, hoping that more people would see them.

I thought at the time that this way of transmitting information was too inefficient and had a very small coverage area. Only those who saw the missing person notice would know about the child. If they had not seen the missing person notice, even if people nearby saw the child, they would not know that he was lost.

The emergence of mobile Internet technology can improve the efficiency of information transmission.

It just so happened that the Ministry of Public Security also had a need to use Internet technology to improve the efficiency of fighting against human trafficking. Therefore, under the guiding principle of "Internet +" proposed by Premier Li Keqiang, Alibaba and the Ministry of Public Security jointly launched the "Reunion" project, with the original intention of "uniting the police and the people to realize the dream of returning home" and the goal of "all people's participation to eliminate human trafficking in the world".

How to build a reunion system? What technical support is behind it?

In general, it depends on mobile Internet, big data and artificial intelligence technologies;

From the perspective of core implementation, it includes three processes: authoritative release, precise positioning and efficient collaboration.

Authoritative release

Who releases information about missing children? And how is it released?

We hope that users will trust the reunion system so that everyone can continue to participate. Therefore, the information released by the system must be 100% accurate, and only anti-trafficking police officers are allowed to publish missing information. There are more than 6,000 anti-trafficking police officers across the country. After receiving the alarm information, they will judge whether the information is accurate and comprehensive from their professional perspective. After review, the police will publish accurate information (including the child’s age, gender, photo, clothing and appearance characteristics, as well as the time and location of loss) on the reunion system developed by DingTalk.

Precise positioning

After the police release the missing child information, to whom and where will it be sent?

Ideally, we should push the information to everyone who has seen the child after he went missing. In the movie "Silent Explosion", Zhang Baomin, the parent of the missing child, posted missing person notices everywhere, hoping that more people would see them.

To achieve the above ideal state, we must rely on precise positioning technology.

Based on the information released by the police on the reunion platform, we draw a circle with a radius of 100 kilometers with the location where the child is missing as the center - which can be understood as a virtual electronic fence, and we will push information to everyone in the fence.

Nowadays, mobile Internet is very popular and everyone is using mobile phones, so using mobile phones to push information to reach the corresponding groups is the most efficient way. The first thing we thought of was to develop an APP, but it can only be used in fighting against human trafficking and finding people, and it is very difficult to operate and promote it. So we thought of cooperating with popular APPs.

The first batch of APPs cooperating with the Tuanyuan system include Gaode, DingTalk and Sina Weibo.

Take Amap as an example: after the police release the information about the missing child, Amap will obtain it from the Tuanyuan system in real time, and then push the message with the place where the child was lost as the origin. In order to push the message more accurately, Amap defines the geographical range according to the possible escape speed of the criminals, according to the standards of 100 kilometers in 1 hour, 200 kilometers in 2 hours, 300 kilometers in 3 hours, and 500 kilometers in more than 3 hours.

The core of this is Gaode's precise positioning technology.

Amap's positioning technology covers GPS, wifi, base stations, Bluetooth devices, etc., so even in places where there is no GPS signal (such as indoors, on high-speed trains, in tunnels), accurate real-time positioning can be achieved.

The general principle is: Wi-Fi, base stations and Bluetooth devices all have unique identification codes (called fingerprint data). With the help of Amap's massive positioning data and Alibaba Cloud's powerful computing platform, we use artificial intelligence methods to deeply mine various fingerprint data and establish a fingerprint database covering the world. In this way, users can be located in real time.

Efficient collaboration

Collaboration between the police and the public: After receiving information about a missing child, if a user happens to see a trafficker carrying the child, he or she will call the police, and the police can continue tracking and rescue the child.

Police-to-police collaboration: If a child is reported missing in Beijing and someone in Tianjin provides clues later, the police in Beijing and Tianjin can communicate and synchronize information efficiently through the reunion system.

Collaboration among Internet companies. When it was first launched in 2016, only three companies participated; now, 25 super apps from dozens of companies in China have been connected, including AutoNavi, Alipay, Taobao, Tencent, Baidu, Toutiao, UC Toutiao, etc. This is the first time that commercial competition has been broken in the public welfare field, and everyone is contributing their own strength for a common goal.

We designed a reunion system, but can it work as we expected?

Let me tell you a little story first, which happened in Hengshui, Hebei Province.

Before the Tuanyuan system went online on May 15, 2016, the administrator of the Tuanyuan system asked everyone to delete all previous test data. But when it went online, it was found that one message was still pushed out - but the police who posted it said that it was not a missed deletion, but a case that had just been reported. When it was just launched, everyone was very unsure, but soon a taxi driver at Hengshui Railway Station (probably the driver who took the child to the railway station) provided an important clue. Based on this, the police, under the coordination and command of the Anti-trafficking Office of the Ministry of Public Security, found the suspect in Zhengzhou, Henan, and safely rescued the little girl.

One month after the reunion system was launched, the child recovery rate reached 89%; six months after the launch, the recovery rate reached 90.91%. According to the latest data, as of September 5 this year, we have released a total of 4,191 pieces of information on lost children and found 4,102 people, with a recovery rate of 98%.

The success of the reunion system is inseparable from the continuous investment of Alibaba technical volunteers.

In fact, after the Tuanyuan system was launched on May 15, 2016, our work was done, and the rest was the work of the Ministry of Public Security, who continued to operate the system. But this is not the case. From 2016 to now, the Tuanyuan system has gone through five versions of iterations, all of which were completed by volunteers in their spare time.

Version 1.0 only has publishing and pushing functions.

Version 2.0 adds feedback information on the recovery of children, which allows people who provide clues to know that the clues they provide are indeed valuable.

Version 3.0 adds the function of automatic statistical reporting of big data.

Version 4.0 (International Edition), promoting China’s experience in fighting human trafficking through technology at the United Nations.

Version 5.0 is in the process of grayscale iteration.

You may think that the biggest reason for missing children is trafficking. In fact, according to our statistics over the years, the biggest reason (60.2%) is running away from home. So we also want to remind parents to learn how to communicate better with children.

In September 2017, Amap worked with the Ministry of Public Security's DNA database to launch a family search navigation function to help parents and children who have been separated for many years reunite. If you doubt your origins, you can search for "family search" on Amap, and Amap can help you find a nearby public security agency to take blood samples for free, and then upload them to the Ministry of Public Security's DNA database for comparison. This DNA database has now helped more than 6,000 families realize their dreams of reunion.

In addition to the reunion system, AutoNavi also launched a public welfare project called "Green Channel". Last year, a middle school student (Xiao Yuze) suffered a brain injury due to an accident. He was originally receiving medical treatment in Inner Mongolia, but his condition suddenly deteriorated and he needed to be transferred to Beijing. After AutoNavi learned about this, it immediately activated the Green Channel function and sent avoidance messages to drivers using AutoNavi navigation along the way during his transfer. This allowed the original 7-hour, 520-kilometer journey to be completed in just 5 hours and 20 minutes, greatly saving time for the treatment of the patient.

Thank you everyone.

Author: Liu Kaikui

Author: Maiya Yang Ningyin

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