Hong Kong Observatory won top award in Hong Kong ICT Awards

25 January 2010

The LIDAR Windshear Alerting System (LIWAS) of the Observatory won the Award of the Year, the top award in the Hong Kong ICT Awards 2009 against more than 600 competitors. At the same time, it also won the Best Innovation and Research Grand Award as well as the Gold Award for the Open stream. In addition, the 3G Barrier-free Weather Hotline jointly launched by the Observatory and Hong Kong Lutheran Social Service also won the Best Public Service Application (Small Scale Project) Silver Award.

LIWAS is an automatic system developed by the Observatory to alert windshear at the airport to ensure flight safety. An innovative method was developed using the laser beam of the LIDAR (LIght Detection And Ranging) to measure the wind speed variations along the airport flight paths. A sophisticated computer algorithm has also been created to automatically generate alerts of windshear. LIWAS is the world-first operational system utilizing the LIDAR technology for automatic detection of windshear, putting Hong Kong at the leading edge of aviation weather services.

The 3G Barrier-free Weather Hotline provides a brand-new service to enable the hearing-impaired to have a video feed of the updated weather information for display on their mobile phones. With minimal cost, the hearing-impaired community could now easily enjoy the new service anywhere and anytime.

Mr. John Tsang, Financial Secretary (front right) and Professor Timothy Tong, President of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (front left) presented the Award of the Year of Hong Kong ICT Awards 2009 to Dr. B.Y. Lee, Director of the Hong Kong Observatory (front middle).

Director (fourth from left) pictured with Captain Mike Davis (fourth from right), Captain Brian Greeves (third from right), and Observatory's colleagues before the award presentation ceremony. Captains Davis and Greeves have rendered strong support to the development of the award-winning LIWAS.