An Artificial Intelligence (AI) software system jointly designed and developed by Dr Andy Chun of City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and researchers from the MTR Corporation has won a top prize at this  year’s Asia Pacific Information and Communications Technology Awards (APICTA).

The CityU–MTR Corporation team won in the category of “Industrial Applications” for the “Engineering Works and Traffic Information Management System” (ETMS), an exemplary collaboration between one of the region’s leading universities and a major corporation in Hong Kong.

“I am delighted with this new international award from APICTA, a highly regarded award among IT and communications practitioners in this region,” said Dr Chun, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science.

Mr Daniel Lai, Head of Information Technology at the MTR Corporation, said ETMS played a major role in planning, monitoring and analyzing maintenance and engineering work during non traffic hours.

“ETMS helps the MTR Corporation provide a world-class passenger train service and maintain its high standard of railway operations, in terms of safety, reliability and efficiency,” Mr Lai said.

APICTA is an international awards programme initiated by the Multimedia Development Corporation of Malaysia to increase awareness of information and communications technology in the community. Approximately 170 projects were nominated this year for the awards in 15 categories from APICTA’s 16 member economies: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, China, Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Macau SAR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

“All the nominated projects have to go through a stringent assessment process with a panel of judges from different countries,” Dr Chun said. “Competition is very fierce because it is the only award of this kind in this region.”

APICTA is one of a number of awards that the CityU–MTR Corporation team has won for ETMS in the past year, including the 2005 Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Award from the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and the 2005 IT Excellence Award (Certificate of Merit) from the Hong Kong Computer Society.