Latest news with #TII
Al Etihad
2 days ago
- Business
- Al Etihad
World Utilities Congress 2025: Exhibitors and speakers show how innovation is powering the future of utilities
30 May 2025 00:16 SARA ALZAABI (ABU DHABI)Exhibitors and speakers at the World Utilities Congress 2025 offered Aletihad insights into breakthrough technologies and bold strategies redefining the future of Technology Innovation Institute (TII) has introduced Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) drone-mounted technology that has been used in detection of underground water leaks at depths up to 40 metres without the need to dig Lead Researcher Luciano Oliveira said: 'The origin of TII SAR began with a clear and urgent challenge: how can we see what's happening beneath the surface accurately, efficiently and at scale?'TII's drone-based SAR differs from conventional satellites with its low altitude - a flexible way of operating and deeper ground penetration.'We integrated SAR into UAV platforms, allowing for high-resolution subsurface imaging,' he how it works, Oliveira added: 'TII SAR sees underground using radar waves. When water leaks, it changes the soil's properties, much like how a cloth darkens when wet. With AI, we can distinguish actual leaks from natural moisture and detect issues long before they reach the surface.'He highlighted the system's precision: 'We combined long-wavelength radar with drone flexibility. It is capable of identifying buried features, including moisture anomalies and underground structures.'After field testing, Oliveira said the tool 'performed well in detecting subsurface changes across different environmental conditions.'This technology reduces non-revenue water loss and boosts infrastructure efficiency.'Presenting the breakthrough at the World Utilities Congress, Oliveira said: 'We are not just unveiling a new tool; we are presenting a strategic solution to global challenges around infrastructure resilience and water security.'François Xavier Boul, Managing Director for ENGIE's Renewables and Batteries division in the MENA region, highlighted the company's focus on developing large-scale solar PV, battery storage systems and low-carbon desalination to help decarbonise critical infrastructure and support national transition the Congress, ENGIE highlighted its full project lifecycle capabilities: 'We are developing, financing, constructing, owning and operating power and water projects. We bring the most advanced technologies and secure projects from the early stages,' he said ENGIE's current projects include photovoltaic (PV), wind and battery storage projects, as well as advanced reverse osmosis (RO) desalination technologies.'Batteries are evolving fast - similar to how PV progressed a decade ago,' he is also exploring high-efficiency gas turbines with lower carbon footprints to support decarbonisation goals.'We are offering decarbonised solutions throughout the energy chain,' Boul said. 'That is the future.'He also highlighted the shifting trends in the energy sector in Abu Dhabi.'Abu Dhabi has been a pioneer. There has always been a strong focus on energy efficiency, and the grid here is among the most efficient in the world. With more renewables and nuclear coming online, Abu Dhabi continues to lead the energy transition.'He pointed to rising investments in grid stability and battery storage, including ENGIE's recent 800 MWh bid: 'We're seeing more battery deployment as part of building the energy systems of the future.'Boul added: 'The future is decarbonised. ENGIE's 2045 net zero target is one of the world's most ambitious - and we are on track, pushing boundaries to deliver innovative, low-carbon solutions.'Charles-Edouard Mellagui, CEO of the Cable Business Unit at Ducab, explained the company's vital role in clean energy: 'Without our cables, this transition cannot happen. You can build capacities, but you cannot use them unless power is transmitted.'Ducab aligns with the UAE's 2030 energy vision.'We are part of the UAE's mission to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 - from 4,000 to 12,000 gigawatts,' he said, but warned, 'Copper is limited. That is why circular economy and innovation are crucial.'He highlighted rising energy demand driven by AI: 'A Chat GPT query consumes 3MWh compared to 0.3 for a Google search. That's 10 times more power. This is a megatrend.'On grid reliability, he said: 'Solar and wind are intermittent. We need storage and intelligence to avoid waste… That is the power of interconnectivity.'Mellagui continued: 'Our focus is on sustainable solutions, not just products… What if there's no copper left? That's why recycling is our future.'Factories emit CO2, but that CO2 can become a resource… It is not waste; it is opportunity,' he added.'Sustainability, interconnectivity, smart energy, storage and carbon capture - these are the pillars shaping the future of energy.'Speaking at the World Utilities Congress 2025, Oxana Dankova, Partner and Global Lead of Energy Networks at BCG, outlined how technology and consumer behaviour are reshaping energy systems.'The concept of flexibility today is about solving two key challenges,' she said.'First, matching supply and demand in time. Second, maintaining the grid's stability as we scale volatile renewables.'She stressed the importance of digital solutions: 'AI is essential. We need to simulate and react in real time... and no human can do that manually.'On storage, she said: 'Storage helps shift generation to meet demand, and it can inject power instantly to stabilise the grid.'Noting the infrastructure hurdles, Dankova said: 'We need to build five to six times more grid… That creates huge pressure on supply chains and skilled labour.'She added: 'Hydrogen could be a long-term storage solution… But the cost of electrolysers must drop.' Turning to the future, she noted: 'Abu Dhabi has the land, sun and ambition… Consumer flexibility - like when we charge EVs - will help us avoid overburdening the grid.'
Irish Independent
5 days ago
- Automotive
- Irish Independent
No traffic calming for Sligo village that sees 50,000 vehicles a week pass through it
However, the stretch of the N17 through Ballinacarrow village has not been identified as a high collision location and will not receive any further traffic calming measures in addition to what was carried out some years ago. Residents says speeding traffic is a daily occurrence despite the fact that Go Safe vans are regularly assigned to the village which is in a 50 kph zone The issue was raised at a Municipal District meeting of Sligo County Council by Councillor Dara Mulvey who sought an update from the TII (Transport Infrastructure Ireland) on speed reductions needed at Ballinacarrow. Cllr Mulvey said other towns along the N17 and N4 have more traffic calming measures in place yet Ballinacarrow was not getting adequate help. 'There are well over 50k vehicles on this road weekly . This village has a national school on the opposite side of the road to where three housing estates are located and parents and children are not happy to cross a national primary road due to speeding vehicles. 'A speed survey carried out by the pupils found that 98 out of 175 drivers were speeding. TII needs to put resources into Ballinacarrow before something catastrophic happens,' stated Cllr Mulvey. Sligo County Council said that through the Sligo Regional Design Office it was currently advancing a number of Road Safety Improvement Schemes along the national roads in the county. These Schemes are funded by Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII). Locations of Road Safety Improvement Schemes are identified by analysing collision history (to identify high collision locations) and through road safety inspections (which highlight road safety issues) completed on behalf of Transport Infrastructure Ireland by road safety experts. Prioritisation is given to high-collision locations when advancing Road Safety Improvement Schemes, while areas with identified safety issues are considered secondary. The stretch of the N17 through Ballinacarrow village has not been identified as a high collision location in the two most recent analyses (2018-2020 and 2020-2022). Additionally, no issues related to traffic calming have been flagged at this location through TII road safety inspection process. ADVERTISEMENT Learn more Sligo Regional Design Office currently has a full programme of Road Safety Improvement Schemes planned for 2025. It is important to note that a Road Safety Improvement Scheme was conducted in 2024 at the local road (L6108) / N17 junction in Ballinacarrow. Following a 'Section 38 public consultation' for that scheme, Sligo Regional Design Office applied to TII for an Active Travel/Traffic Calming scheme for Ballinacarrow; however, that application was unsuccessful, and no funding was provided through TII's 2025 allocations. "The location can be considered in the review of Road Safety Improvement Schemes for 2026, in discussions with the TII Regional Road Safety Inspection Engineer. However, there is no guarantee that a scheme at this location will be funded or prioritized, as high-collision locations and areas with identified issues from (TII led) road safety inspections to take precedence.'
Irish Independent
5 days ago
- Automotive
- Irish Independent
No new traffic calming measures for County Sligo village that sees 50,000 vehicles a week pass through it
However, the stretch of the N17 through Ballinacarrow village has not been identified as a high collision location and will not receive any further traffic calming measures in addition to what was carried out some years ago. Residents says speeding traffic is a daily occurrence despite the fact that Go Safe vans are regularly assigned to the village which is in a 50 kph zone The issue was raised at a Municipal District meeting of Sligo County Council by Councillor Dara Mulvey who sought an update from the TII (Transport Infrastructure Ireland) on speed reductions needed at Ballinacarrow. Cllr Mulvey said other towns along the N17 and N4 have more traffic calming measures in place yet Ballinacarrow was not getting adequate help. 'There are well over 50k vehicles on this road weekly . This village has a national school on the opposite side of the road to where three housing estates are located and parents and children are not happy to cross a national primary road due to speeding vehicles. 'A speed survey carried out by the pupils found that 98 out of 175 drivers were speeding. TII needs to put resources into Ballinacarrow before something catastrophic happens,' stated Cllr Mulvey. Sligo County Council said that through the Sligo Regional Design Office it was currently advancing a number of Road Safety Improvement Schemes along the national roads in the county. These Schemes are funded by Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII). Locations of Road Safety Improvement Schemes are identified by analysing collision history (to identify high collision locations) and through road safety inspections (which highlight road safety issues) completed on behalf of Transport Infrastructure Ireland by road safety experts. Prioritisation is given to high-collision locations when advancing Road Safety Improvement Schemes, while areas with identified safety issues are considered secondary. The stretch of the N17 through Ballinacarrow village has not been identified as a high collision location in the two most recent analyses (2018-2020 and 2020-2022). Additionally, no issues related to traffic calming have been flagged at this location through TII road safety inspection process. Sligo Regional Design Office currently has a full programme of Road Safety Improvement Schemes planned for 2025. It is important to note that a Road Safety Improvement Scheme was conducted in 2024 at the local road (L6108) / N17 junction in Ballinacarrow. Following a 'Section 38 public consultation' for that scheme, Sligo Regional Design Office applied to TII for an Active Travel/Traffic Calming scheme for Ballinacarrow; however, that application was unsuccessful, and no funding was provided through TII's 2025 allocations. "The location can be considered in the review of Road Safety Improvement Schemes for 2026, in discussions with the TII Regional Road Safety Inspection Engineer. However, there is no guarantee that a scheme at this location will be funded or prioritized, as high-collision locations and areas with identified issues from (TII led) road safety inspections to take precedence.'
Al Etihad
24-05-2025
- Business
- Al Etihad
Abu Dhabi's Technology Innovation Institute launches two new AI models
24 May 2025 09:32 ABU DHABI (ALETIHAD)The UAE's Technology Innovation Institute (TII), the applied research arm of Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), has unveiled two major AI advancements: Falcon Arabic, the first-ever Arabic language model in the Falcon series - now the best-performing Arabic AI model in the region - and Falcon H1, a new model that redefines performance and portability through a new architectural the small-to-medium size category of AI models (30 to 70 billion parameters), Falcon H1 outperforms comparable offerings from Meta's LLaMA and Alibaba's Qwen, enabling real-world AI on everyday devices and in resource-limited announcement was made during a keynote address by Faisal Al Bannai, Advisor to the UAE President and Secretary General of ATRC, at the recently concluded Make it in the Emirates event in Abu on top of Falcon 3-7B (7-billion-parameter), Falcon Arabic is one of the most advanced Arabic AI models developed to date. Trained on a high-quality native, non-translated Arabic dataset spanning Modern Standard Arabic and regional dialects, it captures the full linguistic diversity of the Arab to the Open Arabic LLM Leaderboard benchmarks, Falcon Arabic outperforms all other regionally available Arabic language models, reinforcing its leadership in sovereign, multilingual AI. It ranks as the best-performing Arabic model in its class, matching the performance of models up to 10 times its size, proving that smart architecture can outperform the newly launched Falcon H1 model is designed to dramatically expand access to high-performance AI by reducing the computing power and technical expertise traditionally required to run advanced systems. The announcement builds on the success of TII's Falcon 3 series, which ranked among the top global AI models capable of operating on a single graphics processing unit (GPU), a major breakthrough that enabled developers, startups, and institutions without high-end infrastructure to deploy cutting-edge AI, affordably."We're proud to finally bring Arabic to Falcon, and prouder still that the best-performing large language model in the Arab world was built in the UAE," Faisal Al Bannai on Falcon H1, he said, "Today, AI leadership is not about scale for the sake of scale. It is about making powerful tools useful, usable, and universal. Falcon-H1 reflects our commitment to delivering AI that works for everyone – not just the few."Falcon-H1 continues to support European-origin languages, and for the first time, has scalable capability to support over 100 languages, thanks to a multilingual tokenizer trained on diverse datasets. Smarter, Simpler, and More InclusiveFalcon-H1 was developed to meet the growing global demand for efficient, flexible, and easy-to-use AI systems. Named 'H' for its hybrid architecture combining the strengths of Transformers and Mamba, it enables significantly faster inference speeds and lower memory consumption, while maintaining high performance across a range of benchmarks "We approached Falcon-H1 not just as a research milestone but as an engineering challenge: how to deliver exceptional efficiency without compromise," said Dr. Najwa Aaraj, CEO of TII.'This model reflects our commitment to building technically rigorous systems with real-world utility. Falcon isn't just a model; it's a foundation that empowers researchers, developers, and innovators, especially in environments where resources are limited but ambitions are not," she Falcon-H1 family includes models of various sizes: 34B, 7B, 3B, 1.5B, 1.5B-deep, and 500M. These models offer users a wide range of performance-to-efficiency ratios, allowing developers to choose the most appropriate model for their deployment scenarios. While the smaller models enable deployment on constrained edge devices, the flagship 34B model outperforms like-models from Meta's LlaMa and Alibaba's Qwen on complex tasks."The Falcon-H1 series demonstrates how new architectures can unlock new opportunities in AI training while showcasing the potential of ultra-compact models," explained Dr. Hakim Hacid, Chief Researcher at the AI and Digital Science Research Center at TII."This fundamentally shifts what's possible at the smallest scale, enabling powerful AI on edge devices where privacy, efficiency, and low latency are critical. Our focus has been on reducing complexity without compromising capability," he model in the Falcon-H1 family surpasses other models that are twice its size, setting a new standard for performance-to-efficiency ratios. The models additionally excel in mathematics, reasoning, coding, long-context understanding, and multilingual tasks. International ImpactFalcon models are already powering real-world applications. In partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Falcon has supported the development of AgriLLM, a solution that helps farmers make smarter decisions under challenging climate conditions. TII's Falcon ecosystem has been downloaded over 55 million times globally, and is widely regarded as the most powerful and consistently high-performing family of open AI models to emerge from the Middle East many AI models focus on narrow consumer use cases, TII has prioritised building foundational models that can be adapted to meet the demanding needs of industry, research, and public good, without compromising on accessibility. These models are designed to be applied across a variety of real-world scenarios, remaining accessible, resource-efficient, and adaptable to different environments. All Falcon models are open source and available on Hugging Face and under the TII Falcon License, an Apache 2.0-based license, which promotes responsible and ethical AI development. Source: Aletihad - Abu Dhabi
CairoScene
24-05-2025
- Business
- CairoScene
Region's Most Advanced AI Language Model Launches in UAE
Falcon Arabic is expected to enhance natural language processing applications across sectors, empowering Arabic speakers worldwide. May 24, 2025 The Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi has officially launched a cutting-edge large language model designed specifically for the Arabic language—Falcon Arabic. Building on the success of the original Falcon AI model introduced in 2023, Falcon Arabic is the first of its kind developed within the region and outperforms all other Arabic language models currently available. The development addresses longstanding concerns about Arabic's role in the rapidly evolving global AI landscape, ensuring the language keeps pace with technological innovation. Falcon Arabic is expected to enhance natural language processing applications across sectors—from education and government to business and media—empowering Arabic speakers worldwide with more accurate, nuanced AI tools. As AI continues to transform economies and societies, Falcon Arabic represents a strategic investment in linguistic diversity and technological sovereignty—ensuring that Arabic remains a vibrant and integral part of the AI future.
