The “ICT Virtual Organization of ASEAN Institutes and NICT” or ASEAN IVO held its ASEAN IVO Forum 2019 from 20-21 November 2019 at the Crimson Hotel Filinvest City, Manila. This year’s two-day forum is organized by the ASEAN IVO Steering Committee membered by Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and Philippine’s Mapua University and DOST – Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI).

The ASEAN IVO is a global alliance of institutes and universities in the ASEAN region and Japan. The organization seeks and identifies strategic ICT research areas in the ASEAN region and supports collaborative projects in them.

The program started off with an opening address from Dr. Reynaldo B. Vea, President of Mapua University, Dr. Joel Joseph S. Marciano, Jr., Acting Director of DOST-ASTI, and Dr. Hideyuki Tokuda, President of NICT, Japan.

This was followed by a talk from the Chief of Emerging Technology Development Division (ETDD) of the DOST-Philippine Council for Industry, Energy, and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DOST-PCIEERD), Ms. Edna C. Nancianceno on ICT initiatives for Industry 4.0.

Before proceeding to the session proper of the event, Dr. Hideyuki Tokuda shared some of the researches conducted in NICT,  discussing some of the strategic research and development (R&D) fields in ICT such as Sensing fundamentals, Integrated ICT, Data utilization and analytics platform, Cybersecurity, and Frontier research. He also mentioned the Society 5.0, a vision for a safe and secure society which calls for technology shaping and social innovation.

Seven sessions of related researches were delivered, discussing the implementation of ICT in agriculture and food security, environment protection and disaster prevention, technologies and applications, and towards secure and smart communities. DOST Secretary Fortunato dela Peña emphasized how the department’s R&Ds are aligned with the ASEAN IVO 2019’s topics, particularly through the DOST-ASTI being a member of the organization. Guidelines for new collaborative projects were also discussed by ASEAN IVO Secretariat, Mr. Hiroshi Emoto, and will be evaluated for the ASEAN IVO 2020.

In one of the sessions of the program, DOST-ASTI’s Ms. Jessi Christa Rubio presented her research on “Developing a thermal monitoring and management system towards an energy-efficient research data”.

Meanwhile, a poster exhibit of the research projects from different ASEAN IVO members are on display for the duration of the event. Three of the posters exhibited came from DOST-ASTI researchers, namely:

• Setting up a locally shared infrastructure for more resilient network, compute and storage resources for research

By Jelina Tanya Tetangco from DATOS and COARE

• AI applications of earth observation data for disaster monitoring in the Philippines

By Roel M. de la Cruz from DATOS and Rocell Nino B. Vicente from  PEDRO

• DOST-ASTI initiatives on information infrastructure and intelligent systems

By Jeffrey A. Aborot from ULAT and DOE, Fredmar N. Asarias of UAV, Emmanuel Balintec, Kyle Patrick I. Bartido from ULAT, Mar Francis D. De Guzman, Calvin Artemies G. Hilario from ULAT, Glenn Vincent C. Lopez from ARQ, ULAT, DEWS, and AGROMET, and Jerico M. Orejudos from ULAT.

For more information on the ASEAN IVO, you may visit their website at http://www.nict.go.jp/en/asean_ivo/ or email them at asean_ivo_sc_nict@ml.nict.go.jp.