Singapore University Of Technology And Design Research Articles

Using data matching to compare subjective assessments of daylighting environments between Singapore and Nanjing

This study compares subjective evaluations of daylighting environments from two universities: the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) in Singapore and Southeast University (SEU) in Nanjing, China. Two hundred and twenty-nine students evaluated their instantaneous daylighting environments. Four representative daylighting predictors, horizontal illuminance, vertical illuminance, mean luminance of an entire scene and CIE Glare Index (CGI), were matched between two universities using a propensity score matching method. Eighty-eight participants, 44 from each university, were matched in terms of these four daylighting predictors. The results demonstrate that there are statistically significant differences in subjective assessments between these two locations. Under quantitatively similar daylighting environments, more participants at STUD reported adequate daylighting levels with a noticeable degree of daylight glare, as well as desires to decrease current daylighting levels. On the other hand, more participants at SEU reported inadequate daylighting levels with an imperceptible degree of daylight glare, as well as desires to increase current daylighting levels. One reason for subjective assessment differences might be dissimilar socio-environmental contexts, where the participants are acclimatized to different daylighting environments between Singapore and Nanjing.

FIND THE GAP: AN APPROACH FOR VISUALIZING AND ANALYSING DESIGN COMPETENCIES IN A UNIVERSITY WITH INTERDISCIPLINARY CURRICULUM

AbstractDesign education needs to be continually investigated and improved to stay relevant. The Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) is a leading university focused on all elements of technology-based design. The overarching motivation of our research is to enhance design education curriculum at SUTD. Our research objectives are (1) to understand how design competencies are implemented in SUTD's curriculum and courses (2) to identify gaps in teaching of design competencies at SUTD. We analyse competencies in 28 design courses at SUTD. We develop the visualization and analysis of 12 skills grouped under two abilities from the Design competency assessment framework. Our main contributions are: (1) We present an approach to map the design competencies that are taught across design courses at a university with an interdisciplinary curriculum, (2) We present an approach for mapping design competency progression based on ITAE (Introduced, Taught, Assessed, Expected) categorization, (3) Based on the above, we provide preliminary findings on two skill gaps in the curriculum, substantiated with insights from interviews with course coordinators.

Evaluation of the Smart Cities Listed in Smart City Index 2021 by Using Entropy Based Copras and Aras Methodology

Abstract Smart cities are included in the literature as a technology-based concept that has been on the agenda in recent years and whose framework is constantly changing with the changes in technology. There are different frameworks and indexes to define the smartness of a city. Smart City Index 2021 published by Institute for Management Development (IMD) and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) is one of the accepted studies in the world. In the report of Smart City Index 2021, 118 cities are evaluated in five criteria namely health & safety, mobility, activities, opportunities (work & school) and governance. To re-evaluate the cities and compare the results, a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) process including Entropy based Complex Proportional Assessment (COPRAS) and Addivite Ratio Assessment (ARAS) methodology is applied in this paper. To prioritize the criteria, entropy weight method is used. 118 cities are ranked both technologically and structurally using the COPRAS and ARAS method. As a result of the analyses, according to these methods, the rankings of the smart cities are the same. Also, when technologically smart cities are listed, it is determined that the first three countries are Zhuhai, Shenzhen, Nanjing, and at the same time, Abu Dhabi, Chongqing, Hangzhou in terms of structurally.

AI’s 10 to Watch, 2022

AI’s 10 to Watch, 2022

Project Model in The Engineering Universities: Perspectives and Problems

The purpose of this article is to analyze ways to integrate the project approach into educational programs, taking into account the experience of Russian and foreign universities. An analysis of the research problem field has shown that over the past 10 years higher education institutions have significantly changed the traditional educational programs moving to open curricula, as well as project and problem-based approaches. In general, the modification of educational programs is aimed at strengthening their practice orientation to real industrial cases. The novelty of the work can be expressed by systematic analysis of various approaches to integrate project method into the educational models of the following universities: Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD); Olin College of Engineering; Aalborg University; TU Delft Iron Range Engineering; Singapore Polytechnic University. Over the past few years, the concept of the traditional implementation of project activities has been modified to the direction of the company-formulated projects, as well as interdisciplinary projects, where the education is student-centered. Methodology and research methods. When writing this article, the scientific basic method of theoretical and empirical research was used: methods of monographic research, questionnaire survey, methods of working with specialized software products, Internet sources, methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, induction, and deduction.

Architectural Plasticity: The Aesthetics of Neural Sampling

AbstractDirector of Artificial‐Architecture at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), Hokkien Foundation Career Professorship recipient Immanuel Koh enlightens us on the wonderful world of deep neural networks, formal plasticity and what they could mean for architectural form‐finding.

Bringing Physical Physics Classroom Online – Challenges of Online Teaching in the New Normal

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 greatly impacted all forms of social activities globally, including traditional classroom activities across all levels of instruction (kindergarten to universities). While online and blended learning (including MOOCs) have been an active subject of research and discourse during the pre-pandemic days, onset of the pandemic created an immediacy to such means of course delivery better than any administrator or teaching committee could have. This created both a gap and tension in terms of successful and engaging content delivery, where traditional modes of synchronous content delivery were forced online. This situation provided educators with an opportunity to explore the merits and weaknesses of online learning. Thus, this article seeks to outline the challenges and paradigm shifts involved in such synchronous online learning as a replacement for traditional classroom learning, following our experience at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) of conducting a full 13-week online physics course between May to August 2020. At the same time, we reflect on the merits brought about by the availability of such technologies that can potentially be translated back to the physical physics classroom.

Sustainable Workplace in Kyoto – ‘Kyo-sei’ in Society 5.0

At Takenaka Studio in Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), as a design workshop of the faculty of Architecture and Sustainable Design, I selected the area in the middle of Kyoto, Japan for the projects to design today’s ‘sustainable workplaces’. While examining the current situation of the city as well as the urban structure and context from old age, the students gave forms to a space to work/live together in Kyoto of today and proposed several new ways of co-working/living in Society 5.0, where the co-existence of diversified population is essential and we’ve tried to achieve not only SDGs 11: Sustainable cities, but also 3: Well-being for all ages as well as 9: Resilient infrastructure for fostering innovation.

Intrusion detection system using timed automata for cyber physical systems

Operational Technology (OT) often refers to the industrial control systems which are used to monitor and control the devices and processes of critical infrastructure like, water treatment plant, power grid and sewage systems. Conventionally, these OT systems are completely isolated from Information Technology (IT) infrastructure to protect their processes and devices against cyber-attacks. However, the convergence of IT and OT is inevitable to improvise the remote management of physical devices and to enhance the production by incorporating data-driven decision making by accessing and analyzing their real-time data. To achieve this, the isolated OT systems and devices need to be accessed using Internet. However, this interconnection leads both the sensor and control data of OT systems vulnerable to cyber-attacks. This research work extends our previous intrusion detection system that identifies anomalies which are deviated from process-invariants in secured water treatment (SWaT) test-bed data obtained from Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). Additionally, it proposes process-invariants based timed automata wherein the attack and its detection model are represented as timed automata. The proposed system is implemented and validated using UPPAAL, a tool for validating real-time systems represented as networks of timed automata. The results conclude that the proposed system effectively identifies the attacks considered thereby recommending the timed automata as an operational tool for detecting the data-integrity attacks in critical infrastructures. The highly reported attacks that include level indicators, motorized valves, pressure indicators and analyzer indicators are detected successfully by the proposed system. Using the results, Stage 1 and Stage 3 are highly vulnerable.

Roll forward validation based decision tree classification for detecting data integrity attacks in industrial internet of things

Data Integrity attack is a major hindrance to the evolution of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) as it leads to immense financial loss or even human fatality. The existing security features in Software Defined Networking (SDN), which is emphatically superior to the traditional networks mitigate the integrity attacks to some extent. However, a generic, robust, secure and resilient Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for IIoT is still lacking in the literature. Towards this goal, a generic IDS is already proposed in our earlier research work which combines both anomaly as well as rule-based intrusion detection techniques and successfully tested against the real-time dataset obtained from the water purification process in a test bed at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). This research work proposes a supervised learning approach that utilizes Roll-forward technique for validation and Classification and Regression Trees (CART) with invariants for categorization to find anomalousness in the water treatment process. The proposed work incorporates the capability to substantiate time-series data through Roll-forward validation which is then succeeded by utilization of the CART with invariants for classification. The proposed work is simulated using Mininet tool and the train and test accuracies are 99.9% and 98.1% respectively.

Employing invariants for anomaly detection in software defined networking based industrial internet of things

Owing to its integration with cyber, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is susceptible to integrity attacks, thereby inflicting fatal consequences both in industrial and economic domains. Compared to traditional networks, IIoT based on Software Defined Network (SDN) provides various network secur ity enhancements thereby decreasing the effects of the integrity attacks. In an industrial process, anomaly detection with negligible false positives is the ideal intrusion detection mode, where the prerequisite of storing the attack patterns or acquiring the exhaustive knowledge of the devices in IIoT is not required. This research is an extension of our previous work, which employed a hybrid of specification and anomaly detection methods to recognize anomalies of critical components from a water treatment test bed at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). The proposed work defines invariants for all the processes of the test bed. Any conflict from the invariants is notified as an intrusion and the compromised device is identified. The validation is done through Mininet tool with the testbed dataset. Out of the 30 successful attacks, this effort discovers 29 attacks with the detection rate of 96.5% and false positive rate of 6.5%.

Allocating Students to Multidisciplinary Capstone Projects Using Discrete Optimization

We discuss an allocation mechanism of capstone projects to senior-year undergraduate students, which the recently established Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) has implemented. A distinguishing feature of these projects is that they are multidisciplinary ; each project must involve students from at least two disciplines. This is an instance of a bipartite many-to-one matching problem with one-sided preferences and with additional lower and upper bounds on the number of students from the disciplines that must be matched to projects. This leads to challenges in applying many existing algorithms. We propose the use of discrete optimization to find an allocation that considers both efficiency and fairness. This provides flexibility in incorporating side constraints, which are often introduced in the final project allocation using inputs from the various stakeholders. Over a three-year period from 2015 to 2017, the average rank of the project allocated to the student is roughly halfway between their top two choices, with around 78 percent of the students assigned to projects in their top-three choices. We discuss practical design and optimization issues that arise in developing such an allocation.

Multidisciplinary column

Suranga Nanayakkara is an Assistant Professor from the Engineering Product Development Pillar at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). Before joining SUTD, Suranga was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Fluid Interfaces group, MIT Media Lab. He received his PhD in 2010 and BEng in 2005 from the National University of Singapore. In 2011, he founded the "Augmented Human Lab" (www.ahlab.org) to explore ways of creating 'enabling' human-computer interfaces to enhance the sensory and cognitive abilities of humans. With publications in prestigious conferences, demonstrations, patents, media coverage and real-world deployments, Suranga has demonstrated the potential of advancing the state-of-the art in Assistive Human Computer Interfaces. For the totality and breadth of achievements, Suranga has been recognized with many awards, including young inventor under 35 (TR35 award) in the Asia Pacific region by MIT TechReview, Ten Outstanding Yong Professionals (TOYP) by JCI Sri Lanka and INK Fellow 2016.

Smart Grid Testbed for Demand Focused Energy Management in End User Environments

Successful deployment of smart grids necessitates experimental validities of their state-of-the-art designs in two-way communications, real-time demand response and monitoring of consumers' energy usage behavior. The objective is to observe consumers' energy usage pattern and exploit this information to assist the grid in designing incentives, energy management mechanisms, and real-time demand response protocols; so as help the grid achieving lower costs and improve energy supply stability. Further, by feeding the observed information back to the consumers instantaneously, it is also possible to promote energy efficient behavior among the users. To this end, this paper performs a literature survey on smart grid testbeds around the world, and presents the main accomplishments towards realizing a smart grid testbed at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). The testbed is able to monitor, analyze and evaluate smart grid communication network design and control mechanisms, and test the suitability of various communications networks for both residential and commercial buildings. The testbeds are deployed within the SUTD student dormitories and the main university campus to monitor and record end-user energy consumption in real-time, which will enable us to design incentives, control algorithms and real-time demand response schemes. The testbed also provides an effective channel to evaluate the needs on communication networks to support various smart grid applications. In addition, our initial results demonstrate that our testbed can provide an effective platform to identify energy wastage, and prompt the needs of a secure communications channel as the energy usage pattern can provide privacy related information on individual user.

Designettes: An Approach to Multidisciplinary Engineering Design Education

Design and other fundamental topics in engineering are often isolated to dedicated courses. An opportunity exists to foster a culture of engineering design and multidisciplinary problem solving throughout the curriculum. Designettes, charettelike design challenges, are rapid and creative learning tools that enable educators to integrate design learning in a single class, across courses, across terms, and across disciplines. When two or more courses join together in a designette, a multidisciplinary learning activity occurs; multiple subjects are integrated and applied to open-ended problems and grand challenges. This practice helps foster a culture of design, and enables the introduction of multidisciplinary design challenges. Studies at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) demonstrate learning of engineering subject matter in a bio-inspired robotics designette (MechAnimal), an interactive musical circuit designette, and an automated milk delivery (AutoMilk) designette. Each challenge combines problem clarification, concept generation, and prototyping with subject content such as circuits, biology, thermodynamics, differential equations, or software with controls. From pre- and postsurveys of students, designettes are found to increase students' understanding of engineering concepts. From 321 third-semester students, designettes were found to increase students' perceptions of their ability to solve multidisciplinary problems.

Leadership Development through Design Based Wilderness Education

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been collaborating since 2010 with the Singapore Ministry of Education to help develop the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). One element of this collaboration, the Global Leadership Program (GLP), aims to provide SUTD students with the opportunity to interact with the MIT community and experience MIT’s academic culture. During GLP students participate in a program designed to develop leadership ability while also increasing their understanding of engineering science and design thinking. This paper introduces a curriculum combining the pedagogies of design-based learning and wilderness education that was implemented in the summer of 2014 to holistically address the development of these three competencies. Through design-based learning activities, both for and in a natural environment, students were encouraged to develop competencies in engineering science and engineering design while exploring the diverse attributes essential for success as an engineer. This paper examines the results of a retrospective post-then-pre survey administered to the participants upon completion of the program to explore the effects of the program on the development of professional engineering competencies. We find a statistically significant increase in items associated with Individual Leadership Skill, Group Leadership Skill and the role of Society and the Economy. These results are triangulated with student exit interviews and instructor observations.

Undrawable Architecture: Heritage Buildings and Digital Tectonic

AbstractTraditionally architecture in Asia was not graphically represented or formalised, and relied on received knowledge being passed down from generation to generation. Stylianos Dritsas and Kang Shua Yeo describe the Heritage Buildings and Digital Tectonic research project they have been undertaking at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) , exploring the potential of a start‐to‐end digital design process for historical building conservation.

Computational Fluid Dynamics for Architectural Design

AbstractThere are many ‘compelling possibilities’ for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in architecture, as demonstrated by its successful adoption in the aerospace, automotive and product manufacturing industries. Sawako Kaijima, Roland Bouffanais, Karen Willcox and Suresh Naidu of ARCH‐CFD, a research initiative at the International Design Centre established by the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), explore CFD's potential.