Partners

UNU-IIST is the International Institute for Software Technology of the United Nations University. The Institute is a 10 years old international institution located in Macao. It is one of the Research and Training Centres of The United Nations University (UNU), part of the United Nations. It was founded by UNU, the Governor of Macau, and the Governments of the People’s Republic of China and Portugal.

UNU-IIST assists developing countries in meeting needs and in strengthening indigenous capabilities in three activity areas: development of their own and exportable software, university education curriculum development, and participation in international research. On the research side, the Institute is devoted to research in the area of Rigorous Software Engineering. The Institute has experience in applying (so-called) formal methods to Domain Engineering, Enterprise Modeling, Requirements Elicitation, Hardware/Software Co-design, as well as its integration with semi-formal approaches, like UML and with system validation through testing. Due to UNU-IIST’s history and its location a major focus of the Institute is on China. UNU-IIST serves as a bridge between the scientific communities in China and other industrialised countries.

On December 20, 1999, the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) was established upon the return to the People's Republic of China. The Government of the Macao Special Administrative Region is the executive authority of the Macao Special Administrative Region. The Chief Executive is the head of the Government, supported by General Secretariats, Departments and Divisions.

UM is a public university in Macao. The UM team on the project is from its Faculty of Science and Technology (FST). FST was established in 1989 to provide education and conduct research in the major engineering disciplines, including Civil Engineering, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Electromechanical Engineering, and Software Engineering. Its Department of Computer and Information Science consists of a staff of 17 with expertise in a wide range of areas, from artificial intelligence, to graphics and multimedia, to networking and distributed systems, to formal methods and software engineering. FST has been involved in several recent European Union research projects. Recent and ongoing local research projects include MacauMap Handheld Digital Map of Macau; Full-Scale Online Event Ticketing System; Virtual Reality St. Paulo Church; Wireless Multimedia Field Management System; and others.

INESC-Macau (Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores de Macau) was established on 1st March 1996 and is a non-profit institution devoted to scientific research, technological development, technology transfer and training in the area of information technologies, communication, electronics and power systems in Macao.

Since 1996, INESC-Macau has been providing a wide spectrum of engineering and consultancy research services to companies and governmental departments in Macao. It is also actively collaborating with academic and research institutes in Mainland China in a number of international research and development projects. For instance, it organised the High-Tech Expo 98 and designed a series of activities promoting scientific applications and technology transfer that coordinates with the Technology Week. It has also participated in international technological development projects like Eureka as well as information application systems development for local enterprises. Besides, INESC-Macau regularly organises scientific seminars, conferences and training courses with the aim of promoting intellectual and information exchanges among local technical personnel. At present, all of its researchers have successfully completed their Master degrees and some of them are studying for Ph.D. Degrees.

As a responsible local research institute, it is happy to serve the local society. In 1998, it participated in the Y2K Committee with the Macau Government to deal with the problem of Y2K. In July 1999, the Y2K Information Centre was established in collaboration with a number of organisations to provide local enterprises and residents with free information and suggestions on how to deal with the millennium bug. In 2003, its director Prof. Han Ying-Duo was invited by the Macau Government to be a member of the Science & Technology Committee. In the future, INESC-Macau will continuously serve the society by technology transfer through its local research team and the co-operation among the region, P.R. China, and European Union, in order to become a centre of excellence in information systems, communication, electronics and power systems.

The partners play different roles in the project:

• Macao Government acts as an end user and domain expert.
• University of Macau is mainly responsible for training of government IT staff in relevant programming skills.
• INESC-Macao offers its expertise in design methodology and large-scale engineering projects.
• UNU-IIST is the overall coordinator, and the contributor to modeling, development and training phases of the project.

More partners, such as other government departments and software companies, may be also invited to join later.