Vietnamese engineering team continues to "win" the Global AI Challenge in Hong Kong

A team of three Vietnamese engineers won first prize at the Global AI Challenge for Building E&M Facilities held in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (China).

The awards ceremony took place at the Hong Kong Science Park on August 8.

This year's competition attracted more than 200 teams from 26 countries and regions, taking place from June to August, both online and in person.

The competition has two categories: “Developing a general AI model to predict cooling demand for multiple buildings” and “Proposing innovative solutions in the construction and engineering industry.”

It will be a platform for researchers, students, AI experts, startups and industry professionals to exchange ideas and showcase how cutting-edge AI technology can drive the development of the construction and engineering industry.

Sharing with Vietnam News Agency reporters, Mr. Nguyen Hoang Vu, AI engineer and CEO of startup company AIZ, said that according to information from the Organizing Committee of the competition, buildings are the largest energy consumers globally, accounting for more than 40% of total energy use.

In Hong Kong, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems alone in buildings cost about HKD 12.3 billion (over US$1.5 billion) in electricity each year.

The rapid development of AI is opening up unprecedented opportunities to improve energy efficiency in this field, with AI helping to reduce electricity consumption by just 10%, saving the company more than HKD 1 billion.

Therefore, the competition's topic is aimed at building AI models that can predict building cooling loads, helping to save operating costs and easily deploy in many different types of buildings.

Faced with that requirement, your team focused on an approach that can be deployed flexibly on a wide range of devices, including those with limited computing resources, while still meeting quality.

Engineer Luong Duc Long of Viettel Group shared that in order to solve the problem of building a model to support predicting the cooling capacity of buildings, the group tested many different models and then selected the best model that could solve this problem.

Engineer Long also shared that participating in the competition is an opportunity for the whole team to learn more knowledge and problem solving methods from friends in many countries.

In addition, engineer Long also hopes to be able to apply this problem to Vietnam to help reduce the huge energy consumption in buildings.

Engineer Dang Quang Minh of VCCorp said that besides choosing the right model, the difficulty of the competition is that the provided data sets are limited by lack of data or incorrect data due to problems with building sensors or limitations due to new buildings.

Therefore, the team also spent most of the competition time processing and analyzing the raw data of the buildings provided by the Organizing Committee. This contributed greatly to the team's final results.

Speaking at the awards ceremony, Ms Bernadette Linn, Secretary for the Hong Kong Development Bureau, said that Hong Kong has world- class infrastructure and close links with cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, making it well suited to be a testing ground for innovative solutions.

The Hong Kong government is also promoting the digitalization of public works projects and the application of AI in the construction industry, leveraging AI technology and integrated digital platforms, and is building a center to integrate key data from public works projects.

In recent years, AI has driven significant growth in areas such as energy, construction and innovation technology, creating many opportunities for collaboration and efficiency.

This competition not only contributes to promoting Hong Kong's AI transformation, but also lays a solid foundation for the younger generation to master AI applications.

Hong Kong's construction industry is currently in a critical phase of transformation towards smart, green and sustainable development.

The competition not only provides an international platform for technical exchange and talent development, but also promotes cross-industry collaborative innovation, provides important practical examples to promote the intelligent transformation of the construction industry, and injects new impetus into the high-quality development of the industry.

The competition was co-organized by the Hong Kong Electrical and Mechanical Services Department and the Guangdong Association of Science and Technology (China), with sponsorship from technology companies such as Huawei, Alibaba, and Siemen, attracting engineers and students from many countries including Singapore, mainland China, Hong Kong (China), Vietnam, etc.

The first competition took place in 2022 online and the above-mentioned group of Vietnamese engineers also won first prize./.

Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/nhom-ky-su-viet-tiep-tuc-ve-nhat-cuoc-thi-global-ai-challenge-tai-hong-kong-post1054774.vnp