Kenneth Young,
Pro-Vice-Chancellor, CUHK
29 October 1998

On behalf of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, I welcome you to this joint official launch of AICAMS.

In this information age, dealing with crime takes more than Mr Holmes smoking a pipe, Monsieur Poirot exercising his little grey cells, or Justice Pao calling up ghosts and spirits. Instead one needs to direct electrons whizzing around in silicon chips, computing, analyzing, seeking patterns and displaying information. The task requires experts in crime prevention and detection, as well as innovative professionals in knowledge engineering.

The Artificial Intelligence Crime Analysis and Management Systems (AICAMS) is the result of an imaginative collaboration between The Chinese University of Hong Kong and The Hong Kong Police Force. It is a marvelous example of how the capabilities generated by upstream basic academic research (funded by the University and by the Research Grants Council) has met the downstream requirements of end users (in this case The Hong Kong Police Force). Such an example of successful collaboration is particular apt at a time when the Report from the Chief Executive's Commission on Innovation and Technology so eloquently laments the otherwise yawning gap between academic research and industry and community needs.

Here we have academics in the Knowledge Engineering Laboratory of our Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management --- Prof KP Lam and his colleagues --- eager and willing to take their inventions to users, and, more importantly, willing to interact with the users to refine and develop their inventions. Here we have a Government unit eager and willing to take on board new technology and to work with local researchers to shape a product that is not only technically advanced but also suited to actual circumstances.

May I therefore suggest that we are here not only to unveil a tool that will strike fear into the hearts of would-be criminals, but also to celebrate the fruits of a collaboration that should be an example to all.

If you have not seen a demonstration of AICAMS in action on TV last Saturday, you will have an opportunity to do so soon. So permit me to digress from the users' end and say, very briefly, how projects of this type fit into the overall research and educational strategy of The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

We very much hope that research carried out by faculty members will also involve postgraduate students, who get hands-on training dealing with real problems. Research also adds vitality and relevance to our undergraduate education, and brings to our students a sense of realism and immediacy that they will not get from textbooks.

Because of the opportunities it affords for relevant research, and because of its wider impacts on our educational endeavour, we very much treasure this experience and this collaboration, and look forward to the extension of this project, and to other projects, where the research capabilities of the University can serve the community.