Welcome to iLab

iLab is affiliated to the Faculty of Architecture (FoA) and housed in Knowles Building at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). iLab is established as an urban big data lab to take the opportunities and challenges as instigated by the global visions of Smart City and Industry 4.0. It has made a significant break-through in modernizing the construction industry in Hong Kong and beyond. It is devoted to three things:

1. World-leading R&D in BIM, smart construction, and Proptech;
2. Nurturing future leaders of construction digital transformation; and
3. Meeting the industry’s immediate and future needs.

iLab is now developing three clear research lines for construction digital transformation:

(a) BIM and digital twins (DT) for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC), e.g., design for manufacturing and assembly (DfMA), cost management, digital restoration of heritage buildings, energy consumption behaviour simulations, and ‘cognitive buildings’. A research highlight is for digital twinning by using advanced optimization algorithms to process 3D, affordable, high-resolution point clouds.

(b) PropTech for smart construction. The lab has developed a strong track record of devising auto-ID, BIM, blockchain, computer vision, and other award-winning Proptech for managing logistics and supply chain (LSCM) in public housing and MiC projects. A highlight is the i-Core developed from iLab’s original research on smart construction objects (SCOs) won the prestigious Young Innovator Awards in 2016 from CIC.

(c) Big data and robotics for construction waste management (CWM). The digital transformation projects include identifying ‘illegal dumping’ using big data analytics, developing an ‘AI inspector’ for gauging admissible construction and demolition waste (CDW) at government waste disposal facilities, and developing robotics to sort CDW on confined sites like Hong Kong’s. A research highlight is that we won a strategic public policy research (SPPR) grant to develop a ‘missing market’ to boost CDW trading/sharing in the Greater Bay Area.