Urban Analytics Lab

Geospatial and 3D urban modelling research group at the National University of Singapore

We are hiring postdoctoral research fellows to join our growing research group in 2021.

We are a new interdepartmental multidisciplinary research group focusing on urban data analysis, geographic data science, and 3D city modelling at the National University of Singapore (NUS), the #1 ranked university in Asia and world’s #11 (QS 2021).

Our mission is to leverage on spatially enabled data for urban applications, catalyse the development of 3D geoinformation in the context of smart cities, make sense of big geospatial data and digital twins in the built environment, and cater to disciplines such as architecture, urban planning, and real estate to make informed decisions using 3D city models and urban analytics. We appreciate the importance of geoinformation powering urban informatics, and put a particular focus on the geospatial infrastructure and technology.

The research group is led by Dr Filip Biljecki, presidential young professor at the NUS School of Design and Environment.

We are involved in several international collaborations such as the World Economic Forum (WEF), the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS), and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). On the national level, we have collaborations with Singapore Government agencies, other research groups, and companies.

You are welcome to follow our work through Twitter and our blog.

Our interests and key words: Geographical Information Science (GIS), geospatial machine learning, geographic data science, 3D city modelling / 3D GIS (some people also call them digital twins), 3D urban analytics, spatial data quality and standardisation (CityJSON, CityGML), Volunteered geoinformation (VGI) and OpenStreetMap (OSM), Building Information modelling (BIM), Geospatial data visualisation, 3D underground data modelling, and 3D cadastre.

What’s up?

Updates from our Lab

Feel free to follow us on Twitter or through our RSS feed.

New paper: Extending CityGML for IFC-sourced 3D city models

Development of an application domain extension published in Automation in Construction.
2020-11-16 2 min read

Meet our junior members

The Lab warmly welcomes new student researchers
2020-11-03 3 min read

Recent activities of the Lab

After we’ve enjoyed taking part in the State of the Map, IACAD, and 3D GeoInfo, the ongoing work of the Lab was presented at other venues.
2020-10-28 1 min read

New report: Smart at Scale: Cities to Watch (25 Case Studies)

We contributed to the latest report of the World Economic Forum focusing on successful pilot projects that scaled.
2020-10-27 1 min read

Guest lecture by Jinal Foflia

We are very pleased that Ms Jinal Foflia, Senior Program Manager – Geo at Grab has visited us to give a guest lecture as part of our module Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Cartography.
2020-10-17 1 min read

The PI of the Lab elected co-chair of the Open Geospatial Consortium 3DIM DWG

3D Information Modelling Domain Working Group
2020-09-23 1 min read

New paper: How might an LoD Logic Framework Help to Bridge the 3D Cadastre Research-to-Practice Gap?

FIG Working Week 2020. A Proposal for a Level of Implementation Framework
2020-09-15 2 min read

New paper: Tools for BIM-GIS Integration (IFC Georeferencing and Conversions): Results from the GeoBIM Benchmark 2019

A new collaborative paper in which we have been involved has been published.
2020-09-14 3 min read

Participation at the 3D GeoInfo 2020 conference

3D GeoInfo is a key conference in the 3D GIS community.
2020-09-13 1 min read

New paper: Exploration of open data in Southeast Asia to generate 3D building models

This article investigates the current status of generating 3D building models across 11 countries in Southeast Asia from publicly available data, primarily volunteered geoinformation (OpenStreetMap).
2020-09-12 2 min read

New paper: Visualising detailed CityGML and ADE at the building scale

There is an increasing activity in developing workflows and implementations to convert BIM data into CityGML. However, there are still not many platforms that are suitable to view and interact with the detailed information stored as a result of such conversions, especially if an Application Domain Extension (ADE) is involved to support additional information.
2020-09-11 2 min read

SDE signed MOU with Esri Singapore to expand research in geospatial analytics

We are happy that our NUS School of Design and Environment signed a memorandum of understanding with Esri Singapore to strengthen collaboration.
2020-09-02 2 min read

We are accepting PhD candidates

We are continuously looking for talented and highly motivated prospective graduate students to join our research group.
2020-08-25 1 min read

New graduation projects completed at our Lab

We are proud to announce that in the last month, four students have completed their studies by carrying out a graduation project with us.
2020-08-23 4 min read

Assessing the quality of OpenStreetMap building data in Singapore

A new report on OpenStreetMap (OSM) data quality assessment in Singapore has been published. The report describes a recent research project carried at the Lab by Ethan Chen Wai Hoong, focusing on residential buildings.
2020-08-22 2 min read
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Projects and themes

Reusable, Sharable, and Transferable Smart Data Platform for Collaborative Development of Data-driven Smart Cities

Novel technologies to connect smart cities

Large-scale 3D geospatial data for urban analytics

Creating country-wide 3D city models using artificial intelligence

3D cadastre

Collaboration with Prof Jantien Stoter (TU Delft) and Dr Serene Ho (RMIT University).

BIM-GIS interoperability

Integration of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and GIS

Urban Modelling and Smart Cities

Harnessing geographic information in the urban context.

Big Data in Real Estate

Leveraging urban analytics in real estate

GeoBIM Benchmark

Reference study on software support for open standards of city and building models

Opportunities

Openings, scholarships, and fellowships

Please check the opportunities page for more information how to join us.

Teaching

Our education activities

We are involved in teaching master courses and supervising dissertations. Are you looking for a thesis topic? Please check the teaching page for more information.

Recent publications

Our 15 latest papers. Enjoy

All our publications are available here.

Extending CityGML for IFC-sourced 3D city models

Differences in the scope and intent of the contrasting IFC and CityGML data formats entail that converting the former to the latter results in loss of information.
PDF Project DOI

Smart at Scale: Cities to Watch - 25 Case Studies

The World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization has leveraged its knowledge, networks and the public to identify 25 leading smart city projects that have successfully moved beyond the pilot stage.
PDF

Exploration of open data in Southeast Asia to generate 3D building models

This article investigates the current status of generating 3D building models across 11 countries in Southeast Asia from publicly available data, primarily volunteered geoinformation (OpenStreetMap).
PDF Project DOI

Visualising detailed CityGML and ADE at the building scale

There is an increasing activity in developing workflows and implementations to convert BIM data into CityGML. However, there are still not many platforms that are suitable to view and interact with the detailed information stored as a result of such conversions, especially if an Application Domain Extension (ADE) is involved to support additional information.
PDF Project DOI

The ISPRS-EuroSDR GeoBIM benchmark 2019

Standardised data formats and data models are essential for data integration and interoperability, which in turn adds value to data by allowing its reuse in multiple contexts.
PDF Project Project DOI

Assessing the quality of OpenStreetMap building data in Singapore

As OpenStreetMap is getting increasingly popular due to its open-license nature and collaborative aspect, its data quality is …
PDF Project

Tools for BIM-GIS Integration (IFC Georeferencing and Conversions): Results from the GeoBIM Benchmark 2019

Update 2020-09-26: The paper was featured as the cover story of the September 2020 issue of IJGI! The integration of 3D city models with Building Information Models (BIM), coined as GeoBIM, facilitates improved data support to several applications, eg, 3D map updates, building permits issuing, detailed city analysis, infrastructure design, context-based building design, to name a few.
PDF Project Project DOI

Assessing global OpenStreetMap building completeness to generate large-scale 3D city models

PDF Project DOI

How might an LoD Logic Framework Help to Bridge the 3D Cadastre Research-to-Practice Gap? A Proposal for a Level of Implementation Framework

During the past decade, hundreds of research papers have been published on the challenge of registering multi-level properties in land …
PDF Project

An application-driven LOD modeling paradigm for 3D building models

The level of detail (LOD) concept for 3D building models, which indicates the degree of closeness between a model and its real-world …
PDF Project DOI

The implementation of big data analysis in regulating online short-term rental business: a case of Airbnb in Beijing

With the fast expansion and controversial impacts of short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb, many cities have called for regulating …
PDF Project DOI

Graph transformation rules for IFC-to-CityGML attribute conversion

In model transformation, the population of attributes on the target side constitutes the last step of the conversion process that …
PDF Project DOI

GeoBIM benchmark 2019: intermediate results

An investigation into the implementation state of open standards in software is currently ongoing through the ISPRS/EuroSDR ‘GeoBIM …
PDF Project DOI

Considerations for a contemporary 3D cadastre for our times

A significant number of studies has been carried out to establish 3D cadastre solutions to improve the registration of multi-level …
PDF Project DOI

Quality of BIM-GIS conversion

Much work has been done on quality of geoinformation and interoperability between BIM and GIS. However, the intersection of the two – …
PDF Project DOI
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