Photo Credit: Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)

SMU, Fujitsu and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) signed a Master Research Collaboration Agreement on 15 October 2014 to invest a total of S$54 million in an Urban Computing and Engineering Centre of Excellence in Singapore. The Centre is also supported by the Urban Computing and Engineering Corporate Lab @ SMU, funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF), Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore.

The five-year partnership aims to harness high-performance computing capabilities to develop solutions for sustainable urban operations. Researchers from all three organisations will use Singapore as a "living lab" to test-bed next generation solutions for real urban challenges. In addition to the team of engineers and researchers from Singapore and Japan, some of the research projects will include SMU graduate and doctorate students.

The Centre will initially focus on the following projects, with further themes to be explored over the course of the partnership:

1. Dynamic Mobility Management – To develop methods to understand and improve the dynamics of commuter traffic in large urban spaces, as well as manage crowds under extreme conditions and surges, using a new computing platform that combines research in sensing, data management and analytics, modelling and simulation, behavioural modelling and decision support.

The Centre will study the flow of human and vehicular traffic, and model simulations to test how Singapore can ensure smooth traffic flow in crowded areas. A key area of research, for instance, focuses on large urban areas where many people gather in a short time for activities such as sporting events or concerts. “The idea is to provide visitors to such events with intelligent and timely information through their mobile devices to help in decision making,” said Deputy Director of the Living Analytics Research Centre at SMU and Professor of Information Systems Lau Hoong Chuin.

2. Maritime and Port Optimisation – To study port operation optimisation and design of integrated logistics concepts managing inbound and outbound shipments from port to city, aiming to improve capacity without building new facilities. For instance, the Centre can use past data to simulate the number of ships arriving daily and the time taken for goods to be unloaded. Such simulation can be used to plan future logistics, hence allocating time and resources more efficiently.  

The collaboration sees each party bringing its unique research strengths to the table. Fujitsu will contribute to the development of social innovation solutions, using big data analysis and high performance computing for integrating big data analytics and simulation. Fujitsu will also leverage its leading-edge R&D capabilities from Fujitsu Laboratories to contribute to the Centre’s various research themes.

A*STAR’s Institute of High Performance Computing and Institute for Infocomm Research will contribute capabilities in big data including visualisation and analytics, complex systems, modelling and behavioural science, capabilities in urban data exchange, and machine learning for urban challenges like transport and supply chain management.

SMU’s expertise includes methods and software systems for planning, scheduling and decision making that combine artificial intelligence agent-based modelling and simulation, large-scale optimisation, mechanism design, behavioural economics and computational social science.

Mr Tango Matsumoto, Corporate Executive Officer, Executive Vice President, and Head of Global Marketing, Fujitsu Limited, said: “The Urban Computing and Engineering Centre of Excellence offers a valuable and unique opportunity for us to engage in cutting-edge research and development by utilising Singapore’s living big data to the maximum, which synchronises with Fujitsu’s approach of Human Centric Innovation. Also, through this project, we aim to strengthen our relationship with Singapore and hope to contribute to the development of a safer and more secure society.”

Dr Raj Thampuran, Managing Director of A*STAR, said, “This collaboration with Fujitsu, A*STAR and SMU pushes the leading edge of public-private partnerships to solve major urban challenges confronting Singapore and many other modern cities today. Such issues are complex and dynamic in nature and so a strongly multidisciplinary, multi-organisation approach is imperative where knowhow and talent from public institutions and companies are needed to address the problems facing the future of societies.”

SMU President Professor Arnoud De Meyer said: “Through this Centre of Excellence and the related Corporate Lab @ SMU, we look forward to contributing our interdisciplinary knowledge and research from across our SMU schools and research institutes to solving complex urban and social problems. This will enhance SMU’s role in making a positive impact on society by making significant contributions to improving the quality of life of city dwellers. By working together with A*STAR and Fujitsu, we further strengthen our well-known expertise to make sense of data at scale with analytics, to use data to better understand, model and predict human behaviour, and allocation.”

The Urban Computing and Engineering Corporate Lab @ SMU is the fourth laboratory to be established under the NRF Corp Lab@University Scheme, which supports Singapore’s autonomous universities in their conduct of industry-relevant research with companies as partners.

Back to Research@SMU Issue 19 (Oct 2014)