In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, several provinces in Vietnam are focusing on boosting e-commerce and have developed e-commerce trading floors. In fact, as of March, 44 out of 63 provinces and cities in the country had built their own e-commerce platforms.
Most of these platforms are developed and managed by local departments of Industry and Trade. Up to 75% of these platforms use national domain names. The funding for the construction and operation of these platforms mainly comes from the state budget.
According to a report, however, most e-commerce platforms built and operated by local governments are inefficient, with a low number of transactions, a poor range of products, outdated technology, and a lack of support services such as marketing, payment, and order fulfilment. Most of these platforms only offer information about sellers and products. The government should focus on training business households in digital skills and providing them with support and opportunities to compete globally.
Meanwhile, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the two leading localities in e-commerce are taking advantage of professional e-commerce trading floors. The northern province of Bac Giang is the most successful example of selling agricultural products this way. Over the past year, through online trading platforms, the province sold over 48,000 tons of oranges, 36,000 tons of pomelo, more than 60,000 tons of pork, and about 17,000 tons of chicken and a variety of agricultural products.
Vietnam became the second largest e-commerce market in Southeast Asia in the first half of 2022, behind only Indonesia. Vietnam’s e-commerce market is expected to grow significantly and reach US$39 billion by 2025. The country could be the fastest growing e-commerce market in Southeast Asia in the next five years.
In March, the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) approved a plan to support agricultural production households on e-commerce platforms, promoting the development of the digital economy of agriculture and rural areas. MIC aims to have ten million active accounts on the state-owned e-commerce sites Postmart and Vo So. As OpenGov Asia reported, the plan also aims to put all 3-star one-commune-one-product (OCOP) items online.
Launched in 2018, the OCOP initiative seeks to boost the economic contribution of the agricultural sector by supporting products and service-based products in each locality to create a value chain of private and public players. All products are ranked on a 5-star evaluation system and are graded out of one hundred points in terms of product development, marketing and product quality, and the ability to expand to other markets, among other categories. 3-star products score between 50-69 points and are provincial-level products.
MIC will digitally train and upskill all farming households as well as increase the number and value of transactions on Postmart and Vo So. It will help farming households promote, advertise, and introduce new products, and expand to domestic and international markets. Through the online market sites, farming households can access information about farm produce markets, predictions about demand, production capacity, weather forecasts, and reports about varieties and fertilisers.
Supporting the agricultural digital economy is one of the focal points of the National Digital Transformation Programme, which was approved by the Prime Minister in June 2020. The programme identified agriculture as one of eight priority sectors and fields for digital transformation.
The Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC) recently announced the signing of a collaboration agreement; a leading global provider of network security has commissioned HKPC as Industry 4.0 (i4.0) technical consultants to design and build four intelligent production lines for prefabricated steel reinforcing bar (rebar) parts.
The lines are aimed at meeting the local market demand for increased production and quality improvement of steel products, and simultaneously solve the shortage of skilled workers and land use. The project has also successfully applied for the Re-industrialisation Funding Scheme of the Innovation and Technology Commission of the HKSAR Government, receiving a subsidy of about HK$3.9 million.
In recent years, Hong Kong’s bar bending and fixing trade have faced several challenges. For example, the ageing population of skilled workers. In addition to the slower rate of adoption of advanced construction technologies, there are also the issues of rebar quality and work-related accidents one has to contend with. Currently, there are only four approved off-site rebar prefabrication yards in Hong Kong, which can only meet 11% of the total rebar demand.
Considering these issues and the market’s ardent demand for increased production of prefabricated rebar parts, the tech firm sought out HKPC’s assistance in providing tailored technologies and professional support to address its pain points and needs. This includes focusing on its request to produce small-sized prefabricated rebar parts with a diameter of usually less than 16 millimetres. From finding a suitable production site to designing the new intelligent production lines, HKPC not only meets the demand of the firm but also supports the current development direction of the HKSAR Government to promote the off-site production of prefabricated rebar parts.
HKPC will provide a one-stop service for the tech firm, from the layout of the production plant; the design and set up of data collection and network security topography, production equipment specifications, digital system and peripheral equipment specifications; construction of industrial Internet for equipment connection; assembling production lines; setting up data visualisation systems and production operation dashboards; establishing mechanical intelligent auxiliary systems; to a series of enterprise digital integration systems related to intelligent manufacturing, enabling the company to achieve the intelligent production of rebar precast parts.
HKPC will develop the layout of the intelligent production lines according to the firm’s factory environment and its management expectation of production needs. With lean production as its goal, HKPC will consider factors such as the dimensions of existing and to-be-purchased equipment, work and material flow, safe operating areas, environmental hygiene, noise and safety requirements, and optimise the production process of rebar precast parts without affecting other processes and with minimal moving distance, to reduce the occurrence of crossover and reverse flow.
HKPC will also formulate an intelligent production line upgrade plan to achieve the real-time generation and provision of data and information for all operations based on Ii4.0) standards. A digital enterprise operating system will also be established. It will employ a digital order management system and an internal logistics tracking system for the digitalisation of sales order management, keeping tabs on management to delivery, and tracking the production progress and delivery status of the orders.
The company will enabled to obtain real-time tracking information and related customer information on all process handovers, material out/inbound and production quality records to achieve remote monitoring of production, paperless operation and descriptive data analysis, thereby leading to significant increases in both efficiency and production capacity. In addition, HKPC will provide i4.0 technical and operation training for STGL management to familiarise themselves with real-time tracking of production status and remote monitoring of production lines.
The Chief Executive of HKPC stated that by leveraging the advanced technologies of i4.0 such as sensors, data analysis, the Internet, advanced human-machine interface, robots, image processing, artificial intelligence and other technologies, the production and operation pain points and achieve upgrading, transformation and intelligent manufacturing will be addressed.
The HKPC CE added that the introduction of intelligent production in the bar bending and fixing industry is expected to further promote the large-scale development of Modular Integrated Construction (MIC) in Hong Kong, and serve as a model for other trades in the construction industry. Concurrently, the accuracy, quality and safety of building structures are expected to be improved, providing and stabilising Hong Kong’s future huge demand for prefabricated rebar products in basic infrastructure and public housing, as well as nurturing mid-to-high-end talents and creating new job opportunities.
Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), an agency under the Ministry of Communications and Multimedia Malaysia (K-KOMM), recently announced the third instalment of the Let’s Learn Digital (LLD), an upskilling programme covering a wide array of digital tech courses.
Launched under MDEC’s #mydigitalworkforce initiative in 2020, this year’s programme will provide opportunities for the Malaysian workforce to upskill themselves through digital tech courses in areas such as data science, cybersecurity, animation, game development, digital global business services, financial technology (FinTech), digital marketing, cloud and many more.
For the third instalment, MDEC is collaborating with four tech giants and training providers under its Digital Skills Training Directory to make available a host of free-of-charge courses. Registration for courses began on 1 July 2022 and will continue until 30 September 2022. Registered participants can opt to undergo training that has been scheduled during the period between 1 July 2022 and 31 December 2022.
The CEO of MDEC stated that the agency MDEC will continue to work hard to ensure the pipeline for a digitally-skilled and capable workforce goes unhindered. He noted that a dynamic digital ecosystem requires equally productive digital talents to be developed coherently as they believe a good digital talent pool is as vital as advanced machinery. Locally, we have seen many digital jobs have been vacant, or being filled by expatriates, owing to the gap in the digital skills of Malaysians.
With a programme like LLD, the creation of the talent pool through collaboration with industry partners who will provide insights on the current skills and job demand as well as expertise can be stepped up. Among the courses being offered include Blueprint Digital Marketing Associate Certification by two of the world’s leading technology companies.
Meanwhile, the Skill Builder programme by another tech giant will allow participants to turn a huge amount of complex data into knowledge by applying the most advanced analytics, business intelligence, data management and AI solutions.
With the fourth industry partner, participants could enhance their knowledge of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) with expert-led digital training and build cloud proficiency on OCI.
With the inclusion of training providers from the Digital Skills Training Directory, various digital courses are also being offered, particularly on the subject of data science, cybersecurity, software development, animation, game development, financial technology (FinTech) and digital global business services. Training can also include Scrum, Tableau, SAP and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), among others.
In 2021, MDEC launched the #mydigitalworkforce initiative which is aimed at incentivising employers to hire unemployed Malaysians via digital re-skilling or upskilling. The initiative also aims to meet the strong demand for digital business services jobs, and higher-value digital tech jobs.
Meanwhile, MDEC’s industry partners will:
Dubbed as NTUitive, the innovation and enterprise company of Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) together with the Cambridge Centre for Advanced Research and Education in Singapore (CARES) are now working together for the advancement of nanomaterials. In an automated factory that uses Industry 4.0 practices, the technologies will be taken to the next level.
After 20 months of hard work, NTUitive is proud to pilot this model of academia-government partnership, where we aim to bridge the gap between research and product-to-market through the funding and scale-up of promising projects with a specific outcome.
David added that the success of this multidisciplinary project between CARES and NTUitive will put Singapore in the lead position to produce novel nanomaterials, a field where the nation is already at the forefront.
Accelerated, Manufacturing Platform for Engineered Nanomaterials (AMPLE) is a project that is funded by the National Research Foundation of Singapore (NRF). It will develop both software and hardware infrastructure that will help nanomaterials, which are often used in antimicrobial coatings, energy storage devices, and composite materials, work more efficiently and produce more.
Compared to traditional technologies, the AMPLE approach is expected to be over 100 times more effective, reducing experimental workload and scaling up the complexity by a large amount and improving the quality of nanomaterials.
NTUitive will help AMPLE manage its intellectual property and will work closely with CARES on the development and commercialization of technology. NTUitive and NRF will also work together to manage the project’s funding.
The money will come from the NRF’s Central Gap Fund, which supports cross-collaboration between academia and industry and helps turn research results into scalable solutions that are good for Singapore’s economy and society.
CARES was founded in 2013 by the National University of Singapore, the University of Cambridge, and NTU Singapore as part of the NRF Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) programme.
By developing a technology platform that is ready for the market and allows for the quick, economical, and scalable production of nanomaterial technologies, AMPLE will close this gap. The AMPLE technique is anticipated to be over 100 times more effective than current technologies, greatly decreasing experimental workload and scale-up complications and enhancing the quality of nanomaterials. Businesses will be able to quickly invent nanomaterial-based goods with less-polluting production processes because of the ensuing decrease in the budget and time needed for development.
The success of “RINGS” (Rapid Industrialization of Next Generation Materials), a proof-of-concept project funded by the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Innovation Centre Innovate Grant and completed in 2021, served as the inspiration for AMPLE.
The RINGS team, made up of Dr Jose, Dr Kovalev, Prof. Lapkin, and CARES Research Engineer Kencha Satya, demonstrated successfully how they could scale up and enhance the process efficiency of the synthesis of highly antimicrobial zinc oxides by combining next-generation reactor technologies with machine learning.
The AMPLE project will show off the capability of rapidly scaling novel material technologies with high quality and low cost by collaborating with industrial partners in the pharmaceutical, energy, and functional coatings industries.
A Singapore-based spin-off will be established as part of the AMPLE initiative to take advantage of the cutting-edge technology for Singapore and the rest of the world. The Singapore spin-off is expected to have several positive effects and position Singapore as a pioneer in this fascinating and cutting-edge field of innovation.
NSW’s Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) crews are using ground-breaking drone technology to help spot and clear leftover flood debris in cane fields across the Northern Rivers. The region’s Minister for Emergency Services and Resilience and Minister for Flood Recovery noted that the drones, known as Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS), are significantly aiding the ongoing clean-up and recovery effort.
Two teams of drone operators from FRNSW’s Bushfire and Aviation Unit are working in the Northern Rivers to identify and map the location of dangerous debris. The FRNSW Deputy Commissioner stated that this is the first time the drones, purchased with funding in response to the Black Summer bush fires, have been used in the flood recovery effort.
The teams conduct reconnaissance flights using smaller drones and once dangerous or bulky waste material is identified it is larger RPAS’s, which can pinpoint the size and location of the debris, are sent in. After the data is processed, QR codes can be sent to the cane growers. This provides them with real-time maps of their properties, identifying where the obstacles are located. The growers can then remove the debris with the help of Resilience NSW and the Environment Protection Authority.
The flood event in February and March had such a devastating and widespread impact, including for many cane farmers who four months on are still finding debris strewn through their fields, NSW’s Minister for Emergency Services and Resilience and Minister for Flood Recovery said.
She noted that items like fridges, washing machines, gas cylinders, shipping containers and even a swimming pool are being found in cane fields across the Northern Rivers. This sort of debris could damage farming equipment like harvesters and risk ruining harvest season activities, which is the last thing our growers need after being impacted by the floods.
While the waters may have receded months ago, the recovery effort continues and the NSW Government is committed to using any and all means necessary to help the flood-affected communities of the Northern Rivers bounce back, the Minister added.
Across the globe, the demand for drone services around the world continues to rise. This can be attributed to the vast array of benefits that drones provide across different industry verticals. The application of drone services in the agricultural sector helps the farmers in optimising the use of the seed, fertilizers, water, and the rest of the others, to remove weeds, pests, and fungi by taking the right action, to save time spent on crop scouting, to improve variable-rate prescriptions in real-time and estimate yield from a field. The use of drones in agriculture also helps in spraying fertilizer, herbicide, fungicide, pesticide, seeds, and desiccants precisely.
Furthermore, drone services provide inspection & monitoring services and thus, demand for drone services is growing across military and defence, construction and infrastructure, transport, logistics, and warehousing, amongst others. Across military and defence, drone services provide potential benefits such as anti-terror, border security, counterinsurgency, and crime control.
These help in detecting threats and identifying risk-prone areas from a remote location, conducting reconnaissance missions and tracking illegal activities without risking lives, conducting surveillance, and gathering actionable intelligence. With high-quality cameras, sensors, and other components, drones offer high-quality data to the end-users. Drones can capture high-quality images for inspection and other operations.
The Indian Defence Minister, Rajnath Singh, launched 75 artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled products at the first-ever AI in Defence (AIDef) symposium and exhibition, organised by the Ministry of Defence earlier this week. According to a press release, the products fall under various domains, including:
Three AI products developed by defence public sector undertakings (DPSUs), namely an AI-enabled voice transcription/analysis software, a driver fatigue monitoring system, and an AI-enabled evaluation of welding defects in X-rays of non-destructive testing were screened during the event.
Singh also released an e-book comprising the details of the 75 products. It explored the collective efforts taken by government research departments and the private industry over the last four years in the field of AI. He said that the government aims to develop AI-enabled applications for enhanced social welfare and national security. India intends to be a global hub for AI and among the leading countries in the field.
Additionally, the government has signed several memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with the industry to create and deploy AI applications in the defence sector. Many AI-related challenges under the Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) initiatives have been launched. The challenges explore a variety of areas, including radio frequency spectrum management, underwater domain awareness, satellite image analysis, and friend or foe identification systems. Singh urged the industry and start-ups to explore newer avenues and work closely with the government to ensure India is completely self-reliant in AI technology.
The event was attended by dignitaries from foreign countries, senior officials from government ministries, and representatives from research institutes, academia, and industry.
The Indian Defense Department has been using AI in equipment and for several initiatives over the past decade. In January 2019, the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), a Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) laboratory, initiated a project to develop AI-based solutions for signal intelligence to enhance collation and analysis capabilities of the armed forces. The AI-based tools help defence forces constructively in decision-making, sensor data analysis, predictive maintenance, situational awareness, accurate data extraction, and security.
Earlier, the Indian Army set up an AI centre at the Military College of Telecommunication Engineering (MCTE) in Madhya Pradesh. It oversees more than 140 deployments in areas of emerging tech and active support of the industry and academia. The centre, along with a quantum computing laboratory, carries out extensive research in developing transformative technologies for military use.
In January, the Navy announced it had progressed around 30 AI projects that encompassed autonomous systems, language translation, predictive maintenance, inventory management, text mining, perimeter security, maritime domain awareness, and decision making. As OpenGov Asia reported, the AI initiatives have both tactical and strategic level impacts. Officials stated that the Navy would launch several other major projects that incorporate AI and machine learning (ML). Along with centres of excellence, the Navy has organised seminars and workshops with academics and experts for its personnel, focussing on capacity building.
The Indonesian government is implementing a data-driven policy and hastening the digitisation of public services by integrating super apps for public services to create One Indonesia Data, according to Minister of Communication and Information Johnny G. Plate.
If we talk about public services, we must realise that there are so many services that are partially accessed by the public. Therefore, the Government is preparing public services super apps, an integrated public service application in one application.
– Johnny G. Plate, Minister of Communication and Information
Minister Johnny added that the super applications are therefore required to enable inter-agency communication so that they can be incorporated into the same system. Thus, these “super apps” are designed to avoid the repetition of applications with identical features from different government agencies. As a result, to develop dependable and integrated super applications, cooperation from every government sector is mandatory.
He further emphasised the significance of creating a single, comprehensive application for Indonesia to reorganise the hundreds of dispersed applications. He intended to restructure to create one ideal application for Indonesia. Only eight applications, at most, are integrated. This is being prepared in the roadmap for the Ministry of Communications and Informatics.
The Ministry would terminate around 24,400 applications and will then be gradually added to super apps. Hence, employing super apps will be more effective and it will be remarkable for the entire country since the efficiency will be higher than the fiscal intervention and the savings are in the tens of trillions.
On the other side, the nation is still using 2,700 data centres to implement electronic government. However, only 3% of Indonesia’s data is cloud-based; the remaining 93% are separate, which is one of the challenges facing Indonesian data producers.
Meanwhile, according to Minister Johnny, the government plans to construct four data centres that are based on the cloud to realise efficiency in the management of data centres. The first data centre will be built near the current state capital in Jabodetabek, while the government is simultaneously designing the building of a second data centre in Nongsa, Batam, Riau Islands, with approximately the same redundant capacity.
This is being done to ensure that there is a mutual backup if the data centre is used in the future but with the new State Capital, the third government data centre will be built later. In addition, the construction of the fourth data centre will take place in Labuan Bajo, which is in East Nusa Tenggara. Minister Johnny said that the lack of undersea volcanic activity that has the potential to disrupt data centre services was the driving factor for the most recent location selection.
Minister Johnny indicated three primary factors to be considered in relation to the development of the data centre. To begin, there is the possibility that sufficient power supply capacity or electricity in big numbers will become available. The availability of a sufficient fibre optic cable network comes in second, followed by the provision of a redundant service.
He also mentioned the 2022 Indonesian Digital Financial Economy Festival which will showcase the latest innovations in product and service delivery, as well as a synergy of digital economic and financial policy. This synergy is made stronger by a shared commitment, which was made possible by the creation of the National Synergy Movement for Digital Economy and Finance.
This event is related to the 3rd Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting (FMCBG) and G20 Finance Track: Finance and Central Bank Deputies (FCBD), which will take place from 11-15 July 2022. It will include people from different fields, such as academia and international organisations.
The U.S. National Research Foundation has announced the establishment of the Environmental Data Science Innovation and Inclusion Lab, or ESIIL, to assist in the analysis and integration of these data, enhance the use of data-intensive methodologies and advance training in environmental science.
Combining and synthesising data sets that offer information at various scales is necessary to comprehend the effects of climate change and the loss of biodiversity as well as to predict and be ready for catastrophic environmental disturbances like wildfires, floods, and drought.
Hence, the wealth of open environmental data will advance the ability to predict changes in the environment and for life on Earth, thus the ESIIL’s efforts will make these data operational by everyone, from policymakers, and researchers to educators.
By leveraging NSF’s investments in data and measurement, along with support for innovation in environmental cyberinfrastructure, ESIIL will spearhead advancement in the data-intensive team science that is becoming critical in a highly connected and increasingly virtual world.
– Joanne Tornow, Assistant Director, NSF’s Directorate for Biological Sciences.
NSF’s Directorate for Biological Sciences and Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure are both contributing funding to the new synthesis centre. Environmental networks and observatories established by NSF and other U.S. science agencies are producing much open access biological and other environmental data sets. All these data sets are available to the public for free.
Scientists have found that there is a significant need for the research community to evaluate and create cutting-edge computational tools to make effective use of these data as well as to set up and educate teams to address open-ended research subjects.
Together with CyVerse from the NSF, ESIIL will work to diversify environmental data by holding inclusivity as a core value. Through cross-sector alliances, Innovation Summits, and Earth Hackathons, it will also encourage use-inspired research.
By connecting to data sources like the National Ecological Observatory Network, Long-Term Ecological Research Network, Ocean Observatories Initiative, and Critical Zone Collaborative Network, ESIIL’s open Collaborative and Scalable Environment cyberinfrastructure will lower barriers to scientific collaboration.
In addition, it will offer analytics and cloud computing, as well as customised user experiences. The impact of ESIIL will be amplified by posting open educational resources on a learning and research portal.
This powerful and cutting-edge cyberinfrastructure will address key scientific challenges and offer cutting-edge and useful tools and solutions to the larger community. It includes AI-enabled data analytics pipelines, which are essential to ESIIL’s vision and practises.
Meanwhile, the National Science Foundation and the Czech Science Foundation are collaborating on a new project involving scientists from the University of California, San Diego, and Extreme Light Infrastructure Beamlines in the Czech Republic to demonstrate the efficient generation of dense gamma-ray beams.
Because of their high energies, stellar objects such as pulsars can generate matter and antimatter directly from light. In fact, a pulsar’s magnetic field, or “magnetosphere,” is filled with electrons and positrons produced by colliding photons.
Replicating the same phenomenon in a laboratory on Earth is extremely difficult. It requires a dense cloud of photons with energies millions of times greater than visible light, which has thus far eluded scientists working in this field.
The Extreme Light Infrastructure, also known as ELI ERIC facilities, will create the necessary conditions to test the theory that high-power lasers should be able to produce a photon cloud as the first international laser research infrastructure dedicated to the application of high-power and high-intensity lasers.
These experiments will be the first to provide a statistically significant study of gamma-ray generation using high-power lasers.
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