Xi'an city in Shaanxi province held the programmer contest from August 15, with the number of applicants increasing by nearly 30 percent compared to the previous one. The city's big data concerning food and road traffic was first to be introduced to the contest, to enable participants to provide solutions of livelihood issues.

The newly added data were provided by Xi'an transportation bureau and food and drug administration. The data included the running time of taxis, the number of passengers and taxies' running kilometers in the past six months, the results of food sampling and the data of catering penalties in the past 12 months.

The participants are only required to provide PPTs for the two contest problems. One is the food safety supervision program, which requires data analysis to quickly locate the key regulatory targets and supervise precisely. Another is to optimize the scheduling of taxis based on the GPS data of taxis and provide solutions of taxi empty and hailing taxi difficulty.

The competition focusing on the daily life of the public is expected to solve the locals' life difficulties with the help of big data and promote smart city development, according to the local authority.