Chinese University researchers on Monday said the first ever satellite funded by the government’s Innovation and Technology Commission is ready to help predict natural disasters in the territory.

A team from CUHK helped develop the Hong Kong Youth Science and Technology Innovation Satellite which was put together on the mainland and launched into orbit last Tuesday from a sea platform off the coast of Haiyang, Shandong province.

Equipped with remote sensing cameras, the satellite will be used to take detailed images of Earth, with a focus on the environmental and geographic information of Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area.

The satellite is also the first in the world to be integrated with an AI model, allowing crucial data to be processed onboard rather than relying on transmission to ground stations.

Professor Kwan Mei-po, the director of CUHK’s Institute of Space and Earth Information Science, said the satellite can operate for three to five years, adding that data collected will be fed to government agencies.

“We'll share with the Civil Engineering and Development Department with the data. But more importantly, this is not just the data, but also the modelling, AI, machine learning models, that we will try to help with the landslide control and also disaster management. We’ll also share with the observatory,” she said.

Professor Ma Peifeng, who’s part of the team, said the satellite will provide more accurate predictions of floods and landslides.

“We can improve the prediction accuracy because we can know the accurate location of the disasters. Generally speaking, the accuracy can be higher than 85 percent,” he said.

The university’s vice chancellor, Rocky Tuan, thanked the China National Space Administration for its guidance, saying the project lays the groundwork for better disaster response, not only in Hong Kong but worldwide.

The research team said this project is just the initial phase of a much larger initiative involving numerous satellite launches, with the next one expected in 2025.