Drainage Services Department

DSD Annual Media Briefing 2024

The Drainage Services Department held its Annual Media Briefing on 23 May to brief the media the department's preparation work in coping with rainy and typhoon seasons.

At the briefing, Mr Ringo MOK Wing-cheong, the Director of the Drainage Services Department, stated that the department will continue to implement flood prevention infrastructure projects to reduce flooding risks, while at the same time carrying out flood prevention work in four aspects, including advance emergency preparedness, enhanced early warning, decisive emergency response, and speedy recovery, so as to put the concept of "Flood Resilience" into practice.

Mr MOK added that in coping with this year's rainy and typhoon seasons, the DSD has carried out a series of follow-up works across Hong Kong since last September, with the majority of these works having been completed in the first quarter of this year. In addition, the DSD has reviewed and strengthened the operation of the Emergency and Control Centre and emergency response teams, to further enhance the emergency response capabilities. Mr MOK also introduced that the DSD has adopted innovative technologies to combat extreme weather, including the installation of smart sensors to monitor water levels in stormwater manholes, as well as the application of a robot, namely the "Tumbler Inspection Ball", to assist in the underground pipeline condition survey, enabling the DSD's timely maintenance works. Furthermore, the DSD planned to put on trial an artificial intelligence flood detection and monitoring system in Yuen Long and Tsim Sha Tsui, collecting and analysing the real-time video data from the streets. The system will facilitate the deployment of the DSD emergency response teams to follow up on flooding incidents at an early stage.

To further cope with the extreme weather in the long term, the DSD has been undertaking a "Strategic Planning Study on Flood Management Against Sea Level Rise and Extreme Rainfall". The study aims to assess the impact of climate change on Hong Kong's stormwater drainage systems till the end of the century and formulate comprehensive territory-wide flood management strategies. It is expected to be completed by this year.

After the briefing, Mr Brian CHOI Wing-hing, the Assistant Director/Projects and Development of the DSD, toured the media around the works site of the "Sau Nga Road Flood Storage Scheme". The DSD is currently constructing an underground stormwater storage tank with a capacity of around 64,000 cubic meters at the Sau Nga Road Playground. During heavy rainstorms, the stormwater storage tank can temporarily store excess rainwater so as to mitigate the flood risk at downstream. The project also optimized the use of land resources by implementing the "single site, multiple use".

The Director of Drainage Services, Mr Ringo MOK Wing-cheong (middle), the Assistant Director/Projects and Development, Mr Brian CHOI Wing-hing (left), and the Assistant Director/Operations and Maintenance, Mr Edwin LAU Shing-cheong (right) briefed the media the department's measures in coping with rainy and typhoon seasons

The Assistant Director/Projects and Development, Mr Brian CHOI Wing-hing (left), DSD Senior Engineers, Ms Joy LEE Ching-man (middle), and Mr Ronald SIU Wai-chung (right), introduced the details of the "Sau Nga Road Flood Storage Scheme" to reporters

Reporters learnt more about the progress of the "Sau Nga Road Flood Storage Scheme" by adopting its "Augmented Reality (AR)" technology