Mr. Choi Chiu Wo won the First Award in the IEE Hong Kong Younger Members Exhibition / Conference 2005

The Paper "Controlling Salinity in the Macau Raw Water System Using a Constraint Programming" by Mr. Choi Chiu Wo received the First award in the IEE Hong Kong Younger Members Exhibition / Conference 2005 (YMEC 2005) under the postgraduate category. The awarding ceremony was organized on 17 July 2005 in Hong Kong. Mr Choi, a Ph.D. Student of the Department was supervised by Prof. Lee Ho Man Jimmy.

Paper Abstract:
Salinity is the relative concentration of salts in water. The Macau raw water supply system pumped water from the West River for potable use. During the winter dry season, the intrusion of sea water could drastically raise the salinity of the West River to a high level. This may affect the daily life of some 450,000 Macau residents. The Macao Water Supply Co. Ltd. currently uses a manual trial-and-error method on a simplified computerized model to identify optimized operations of the raw water system for controlling the salinity of potable water. In this project, we apply Artificial Intelligence technique, in particular constraint programming, in the design and construction of an system to automate the optimization process. The constructed system, which is based on a more realistic model, is able to solve the problem much more efficiently and generate solutions of high quality. Our system has already been delivered to our client for deployment. As far as we know, this is the first application of constraint programming to water management domain.

The IEE YMEC Awarding Ceremony on 17 July 2005