Three excellent Vietnamese engineers won the Global AI Challenge in Hong Kong

DNVN - Three Vietnamese engineers have won first prize at the Global AI Challenge for Building E&M Facilities, an artificial intelligence (AI) competition in the field of construction and engineering, held in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (China). The award ceremony was held on August 8 at the Hong Kong Science Park.

Engineer Luong Duc Long of Viettel Group (standing second from right) and Nguyen Hoang Vu, AI engineer and CEO of startup company AIZ (standing third from right) represented the competition to receive the highest award.

This year’s competition brings together more than 200 teams from 26 countries and territories, taking place from June to August in both online and offline formats. 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”. This is an opportunity for researchers, students, AI experts, startups and industry players to share ideas and introduce advanced AI applications to promote the development of the construction and engineering industry.

According to VNA, Nguyen Hoang Vu said that according to data from the organizing committee, buildings are the largest consumers of energy globally, accounting for over 40% of total energy use. In Hong Kong alone, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems consume about 12.3 billion HKD (equivalent to more than 1.5 billion USD) of electricity each year. He emphasized that the explosion of AI opens up the possibility of increasing energy efficiency, with just a 10% reduction in electricity consumption helping to save more than 1 billion HKD. The competition's topic therefore focuses on building an AI model to predict building cooling loads, helping to reduce operating costs and being easy to apply to many types of buildings. His team chose an approach that allows deployment on many devices, including devices with limited computing resources, while still ensuring prediction quality.

According to engineer Luong Duc Long, to solve the problem of predicting the cooling capacity of a building, the team tested many different models before choosing the optimal solution. He added that this is a valuable opportunity to learn methods and problem-solving methods from many countries, and hopes that this result will be applied in Vietnam to significantly reduce the amount of energy consumed in buildings.

Engineer Dang Quang Minh of VCCorp said that in addition to choosing the right model, the big challenge lies in the limited data set due to lack of information or errors from the building's sensors, or because the new construction does not have enough data. The team spent most of their time processing and analyzing the raw data provided by the organizers, thereby contributing significantly to the overall achievement.

Speaking at the awards ceremony, Ms. Bernadette Linn, Secretary for the Hong Kong Development Bureau, emphasized that Hong Kong possesses world-class infrastructure and is closely linked to cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, creating favorable conditions for testing advanced solutions. The SAR government is accelerating the digitalization of public works projects, applying AI and integrated digital platforms, and building important data centers from these projects.

In recent years, AI has made great strides in the energy, construction and innovation industries, opening up opportunities for collaboration and efficiency. The competition not only helps Hong Kong accelerate its AI transformation, but also lays a foundation for the younger generation to master the application of this technology.

Hong Kong’s construction industry is currently in a transition phase towards a smart, green and sustainable model. This event provides an international platform for technical exchange, human resource development, and fosters cross-industry collaboration, while providing practical examples for smart transformation and quality improvement of the industry.

The competition was organized by the Hong Kong Electrical and Mechanical Services Department in collaboration with the Guangdong Science and Technology Association (China), and sponsored by technology corporations such as Huawei, Alibaba, Siemens, attracting engineers and students from many countries such as Singapore, mainland China, Hong Kong (China) and Vietnam. The first edition of the competition took place in 2022 in an online format, and the Vietnamese engineering team also won first prize that year.

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Source: https://doanhnghiepvn.vn/cong-nghe/ba-ky-su-viet-xuat-sac-doat-quan-quan-global-ai-challenge-tai-hong-kong/20250811072451181