The nation's leading IT firm, Financing and Promoting Technology Corporation (FPT), breaks ground yesterday for a new urban area in the central city of Da Nang.

Located in Ngu Hanh Son District, the 181ha FPT City is designed by US-based urban planning firm Skidmore, Owings&Merrill (SOM).

The city would be built to international standards with special attention paid to making it environmentally friendly, FPT officials said.

More than half the area would be utilised to create green spaces with a system of lakes and canals designed to prevent flooding.

The project would take advantage of FPT's strengths in information technology, telecommunications, energy-saving and green technologies, the officials said.

FPT City Da Nang will have commercial and financial centres, offices, hotels, shopping, entertainment and sports complexes, clinics and a luxury residential area with apartments and villas.

The city also has a man-made fresh water lake on an area of seven ha.

An education centre comprising schools, the FPT University and the FPT Software Technology Research and Training Centre will also be built. "This will be a model for FPT to develop other urban areas nationwide," said Bui Thien Canh, general director of the FPT City Da Nang Joint-Stock Company.

In another development, the Financing and Promoting Technology Corporation (FPT) Technology Research Institute and FPT University have signed a memorandum of understanding with Japan's Tohoku University's Space Robotics Laboratory to make electronic equipment that monitors cameras on Japanese micro-satellite RISESAT.

Experts from Tohoku and Hokkaido universities had earlier worked with FPT Technology Research Institute, Ha Noi National University and Space Technology Institute on the opportunity for Vietnamese scientists to join the manufacturing and application of the 50kg RISESAT and to equip it with a camera to observe the Earth.

The RISESAT is set for launch at the end of 2013, and Viet Nam's use of the satellite will be proportionate to the contribution it has made to the project.

(Source: Vietnamnet)