The 51st Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions recently concluded in Switzerland, with the Chinese delegation securing 90 gold medals. Among these, the ‘Hong Kong Smart Flood Prediction and Early Warning System – Miaoyixi’, jointly developed by the Hong Kong Drainage Services Department and led by Tang Hongwu, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Party Secretary of SCUT, was awarded a gold medal, highlighting China’s international leadership in the fields of smart water management and urban flood prevention and control.

Tang Hongwu, Secretary of the Party Committee of SCUT, and Mok Wing Cheung, Director of the Drainage Services Department of Hong Kong, attended the system launch ceremony

Addressing the challenges posed by frequent extreme rainfall against the backdrop of global climate change and rapid urbanisation, as well as the low computational efficiency and slow response times of traditional physical models, the team overcame the time constraints of conventional models. They innovatively constructed a rapid urban flooding early warning model based on explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), successfully developing the “Miaoyixi” system. The system utilises Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks as its core, with high-precision hydraulic model simulation results serving as the training foundation. Through XAI technology, it resolves the ‘black-box problem’ of deep learning, thereby enhancing the transparency and credibility of the simulations.

Leveraging artificial intelligence and digital twin technology, the system can generate rolling forecasts of flood evolution over the next two hours at six-minute intervals based on data from the Hong Kong Observatory; under single-core, single-threaded conditions, it can complete real-time simulations covering the entire territory of Hong Kong—nearly 1,000 square kilometres—in approximately three minutes. The project’s Gold Medal win represents not only high recognition of its technological innovation, engineering practicality and social value, but also a landmark achievement of cross-border collaboration between Guangdong and Hong Kong and the deep integration of industry, academia and research.

Moving forward, the team will continue to optimise the system and promote the implementation of these results across the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and in more cities nationwide. Founded in 1973, the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva is one of the world’s longest-running, largest and most influential invention exhibitions, hailed as the ‘Olympic Games of the international invention community; its Gold Medal represents cutting-edge innovation and practical value on the global stage.

Source：SCUT News

Translated by SHI Weipeng

Reviewed by AN Yufan