Pioneering research being done at SEC
With a 3- to 5-year time horizon, these projects are researching in important areas such as urban sustainability, resilience and health
AWAY from the public eye, many interesting research projects are taking place here in Singapore at a Swiss-led organisation. Some of the projects that are being worked on have the potential to have a significant impact on Singapore, and can also help to improve the life of people in the region in the years to come.
With a 3- to 5-year time horizon, these projects are researching in important areas such as urban sustainability, resilience and health, through programmes such as Future Cities Lab Global, Future Resilient Systems, and Future Health Technologies. The Cooling Singapore project tackles the challenge of the urban heat island effect, while the Digital Underground project aims to map out sub-surface utilities in Singapore.
The path-breaking work is taking place at the Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC), which was established in 2010 by ETH Zurich - the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - and Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF), as part of the latter’s CREATE campus. Besides some funding from ETH Zurich, SEC is supported by NRF.
CREATE – the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise – is an international research campus and innovation hub supported by NRF.
With all the talk about global warming leading to rising temperatures worldwide and Singapore experiencing hotter weather, of interest to everyone would be SEC’s Cooling Singapore project. It is a multi-disciplinary research project dedicated to developing solutions to address the urban heat challenge in densely populated Singapore.
Cooling Singapore is also a multi-institutional project and is led by the SEC in partnership with the Singapore Management University, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, TUMCREATE (established by the Technical University of Munich), the National University of Singapore, and Cambridge CARES.
The research team for this project has published Strategies for Cooling Singapore, a catalogue of 86 strategies and measures for mitigating the urban heat island effect and improving outdoor thermal comfort, says SEC’s new managing director Thomas Meyer.
It has also published a guide, Tools for Cooling Singapore, which contains description of 24 simulation tools able to assess the impact of different strategies in reducing urban heat island and improving outdoor thermal comfort in Singapore. The insights from these provide actionable plans for policymakers on mitigation strategies.
Dr Meyer says the team is developing an island-wide digital urban climate twin (DUCT) in Singapore by integrating relevant computational models (environmental, land surface, industrial, traffic, building energy) as well as regional and micro-scale climate models. Building on work done in earlier phases, the team is working closely with government agencies to explore the heat effects of buildings, transport and industry.
Expected to be ready before the end of the year, the DUCT will feature a sophisticated graphical user interface designed to support its users in conducting simulation experiments and exploring "what if" scenarios.
Insights gained can be used by urban planners and policymakers as part of their decision-making processes, he adds.
Another interesting project is Future Cities Lab (FCL) Global which helps to shape sustainable cities and settlement systems through science, by design, in place, over time through transdisciplinary and distinctive European and Asian perspectives.
Over the years, FCL Global has been actively working with government stakeholders, for example through workshops with Urban Redevelopment Authority planners for long-term vision planning and thinking. In Nov 2021 its researchers found the potential of using mycelium (the roots of fungi) as a material in construction, providing a new green alternative to construction materials.
“Mycelium alone is not strong enough. With advanced processing, dense mycelium-bound composites (DMCs) resembling commercial particleboards can be formed for potential use in the construction and furniture industries,” Dr Meyer tells BT.
The DMC was made using Ganoderma lucidum mycelium grown on a substrate of sawdust and empty fruit bunches collected from the waste by products of sawmills and palm oil factories. The researchers continue to explore ways to optimise the growth of mycelium and create a viable mycelium-based structure, he adds.
The digital underground project is a collaboration between the Singapore Land Authority and the Singapore-ETH Centre that aims to establish a reliable digital twin of all sub-surface utilities in Singapore.
Through research and collaboration following an integrated approach, the project aims to identify, develop, test, and recommend the workflows, supporting instruments, technology, and capabilities for the establishment of a sustainable utility mapping ecosystem, says Dr Meyer.
The project is currently in its third phase with workflows for reliable data quality started in 2021 and is expected to run until the end of 2023.
It aims to put previously developed recommendations into practice and evaluate and further refine them as workflows in pilot studies, together with utility companies, surveyors, and other key stakeholders.
Dr Meyer tells BT that the first phase saw the delivery of a roadmap that details an integrated approach and strategy to achieving the desired goal. In the second phase, foundations of the ecosystem were further developed and described, resulting in detailed recommendations for sub-surface utility data governance, an infrastructure for data management and consolidation, techniques for surveying and mapping, and capability development.
SEC’s Future Resilient Systems (FRS) project - which started in 2014 and is now in the second phase, addresses the challenges of increasing interconnectedness and complexity of infrastructure systems, which provide energy, transport, communication, financial, production, and other essential services to modern societies. It aims to enhance the resilience of urban systems by combining engineering, design and social research, says Dr Meyer.
In June this year, FRS researchers developed InfraRisk, a platform that helps decision makers create policies for better disaster resilience of interconnected networks. The platform can simulate network- wide effects of disaster induced infrastructure failures and subsequent post-disaster restoration.
SEC says that developed in Python, the platform contains several modules that model infrastructure networks, hazards, the consequences of these hazards on urban networks, and the metrics to quantify risks and the resilience of the integrated infrastructure networks like power, water and transport networks against disaster events.
As SEC is ETH Zurich's only research centre outside of Switzerland, it has strengthened the research capacity of ETH Zurich to develop sustainable solutions to global challenges in Switzerland, Singapore and the surrounding regions, says Dr Meyer.
“The research here focuses on topics of global importance that can be better researched in Singapore than in Switzerland, for example when it comes to questions of sustainability, urbanisation and climate.
“Our research focus is in the intersection of both Switzerland’s and Singapore’s priority areas of research. The density of Singapore, and the availability of real-life data by collaborating with government agencies are key factors for the success of our research.”
Among the research projects done by SEC in Singapore that have benefited both countries and elsewhere around the globe is ur-scape. Developed by FCL Global, it is an open-source spatial planning tool designed to support sustainable futures in rapidly developing urban and rural regions where data is often difficult to access and uneven in quality, and where development needs are especially urgent and challenging.
“ur-scape helps city makers like governments, businesses or communities to improve the quality of planning and design decisions. It helps develop liveable neighbourhoods, build responsive towns, reduce city ‘stress points’ (flooding, traffic snarls, poverty) and enhance ‘sweet spots’ (accessible, equitable, economically vibrant), and progress towards strategic development goals (regional, national and SDGs),” says Dr Meyer. SGD stands for the United Nation’s sustainable development goals.
The team did a virtual training session for local representatives from universities, government departments, and businesses in Vietnam on how to use ur-scape.
Another interesting project is called Expandable House. First developed by FCL Global researchers in 2018, it is a prototype for a sustainable type of dwelling based in Batam. It was designed to address housing challenges in Batam due to its rapid development.
Dr Meyer says that the building can be flexibly configured around the fluctuating patterns of resource consumption and expenditure, or metabolism, of its residents.
The house provides a roof that can be hoisted, and floor and foundations that can support up to three additional floors. This system allows flexible financing whereby the developer or state housing agency provides the roof and foundations, while the residents provide infill as their circumstances require and budget allows. It also helps accommodate crucial income- generating functions like shop, café, garage and cottage industry along with the dwelling.
SEC started with just the Future Cities Laboratory programme in 2010. It has since grown to include Future Resilient Systems and Future Health Technologies programmes. “Throughout the years, our collaboration with Singapore government agencies has only grown stronger and expanded as we launched new research programmes,” says Dr Meyer.
“We believe that through active and ongoing collaboration, engagement and close partnership with our various stakeholders like the government and industry, is the foundation for more innovation, knowledge sharing and impact.”
Asked how the interaction take place between SEC and its parent institution in Switzerland, Dr Meyer tells BT that many of the principal investigators in Singapore are typically professors at ETH Zurich.
They are also leading the different research modules here in close collaboration with the local researchers. Professors from ETH Zurich also regularly visit and give talks and seminars in Singapore, he adds.
SEC is a multidisciplinary research institute with over 300 researchers and staff from over 20 countries including Germany, Switzerland, India, Italy, Poland, China and Singapore.
They represent more than 30 disciplines including engineering, architecture, computer science, social sciences, economics, biomedical science, sport and exercise science, etc.
“The combination of our diversity, trans-disciplinarity of studies from different backgrounds and experiences are what gives value to the work we do. It is because of the many experts from different disciplines that we can approach research and science from a holistic perspective,” says Dr Meyer.
SEC actively interacts with the other researchers in CREATE and this is one of the benefits of being located in the CREATE campus. It collaborates in different research modules with different institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Cambridge, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University and the Singapore University of Technology and Design.
Dr Meyer says that being located in CREATE enables his organisation to have exchanges with the other top scientific minds in one building.
Among others avenues, knowledge sharing and exchange between the different CREATE entities takes place during seminars and talks.
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