Recent activities of the UAL: guest lectures and lab seminars

Guest lectures with Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and Grab

Urban Analytics Lab
2021-04-03 2 min read

We were quite active in the past months. Besides our work being featured at a high profile event, we had a bunch of internal activities: we were fortunate to be able to host three guest speakers as part of our master of urban planning module on urban data science, and we had also organised a few lab seminars.

Guest lectures

The first guest lecture was given by Zhongwen Huang, an urban planner and Director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) Digital Planning Lab, on the topic of Urban Planning 2.0. Very impressive work.

Director Zhongwen Huang presenting the work of the URA Digital Planning Lab.
Director Zhongwen Huang presenting the work of the URA Digital Planning Lab.

Second, our Abraham Noah Wu presented Roofpedia, his ongoing project on mapping solar and green roofs around the world. Abraham has developed an approach to automatically identify specific rooftops across 17 cities that contribute towards sustainable development.

Our lab member Abraham presenting the methodology and results of Roofpedia.
Our lab member Abraham presenting the methodology and results of Roofpedia.

The third guest lecture was given by Dmitry Shkolnik, a data scientist/economist at Grab, on the topic of Carving out a niche with (and for) R at Grab. Dmitry also presented his personal projects, e.g. R packages he has developed. Make sure to check his blog containing very cool analyses.

Carving out a niche with (and for) R at Grab, by Dmitry Shkolnik.
Carving out a niche with (and for) R at Grab, by Dmitry Shkolnik.

Lab seminars

We are happy that, amid the pandemic, we could manage to organise an in-person lab seminar hosting an external speaker. Cai Wu, a doctoral candidate at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, presented his work Simulating The Urban Spatial Structure With Spatial Interaction. His work includes also Singapore as a study area. Cai, thanks for visiting us, we wish you success with your PhD journey.

Cai Wu (University of Twente) presenting his research at our lab seminar.
Cai Wu (University of Twente) presenting his research at our lab seminar.

Finally, our graduate students Koichi Ito and Chen Wangyang updated us on their progress and plans for further research. Both are working on master theses that advance the applications of deep learning in urban planning. Wangyang is working on developing a deep learning-based method to classify urban morphology and relate it to urban vitality, while Koichi is investigating the usability of street view imagery for assessing bikeability (with Singapore and Tokyo as case studies).

Wangyang presenting his research at our lab seminar.
Wangyang presenting his research at our lab seminar.
Koichi presenting his research at our lab seminar.
Koichi presenting his research at our lab seminar.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their cool work! 🙏

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Urban Analytics Lab
Urban Analytics Lab

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