The Housing Bureau and the University of Hong Kong signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Monday to advance research and application of innovative construction technologies for public housing projects.
Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho said the partnership will leverage HKU's research expertise alongside the Housing Authority's full-cycle functions – from planning and design to construction and maintenance – to bring world-class innovations to local construction practices.
HKU President and Vice-Chancellor Xiang Zhang said the MOU marks a new milestone in interdisciplinary collaboration to build high-quality public housing faster and safer to meet pressing demand.
The Housing Authority has been actively adopting technologies such as Modular Integrated Construction, digital twins, and AI applications. A collaborative project with HKU, the Agit AIoT System for Cross-border MiC Logistics, won a Gold Medal at the International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva in March and the Hong Kong ICT Award last November.
The system uses i-Core sensors on MiC modules for real-time transport monitoring combined with AI multi-agent reinforcement learning to enable dynamic scheduling and proactive vibration alerts, ensuring safe and timely delivery.
The three parties will explore further collaboration to apply innovative research to public housing planning, design, construction, and operations, with the aim of extending to private housing and infrastructure projects.
