Research

our Vision

Rapid urbanization is putting a strain on city infrastructure, depleting natural resources and reducing quality of life. Solutions based on Internet of Things and Digital forces are paving the way for intelligent infrastructures and Cities.

There is a growing need to ensure that residents and stakeholders of our present and future cities experience efficient city services and better Quality of Life. It is vital that these stakeholders, which include governments, businesses, and non-government entities, have their individual needs anticipated and met. Concurrently, it is also critical to educate and empower citizens to take informed decisions at various stages of life.

The SMU-TCS iCity Lab is a research arm of innovative solutions powering citizen-centric services in various pillars of Smart Cities. In particular, our mission is to build an end-to-end citizen-centric platform that integrates IOT and social-behavioral research, which is validated through large-scale pilot test-bedding with various partners, to enable an inclusive and intelligent city and nation.

Current Key Research Areas

Holistic and Personalised Ageing through Technology

The multidimensional nature of the ageing problem calls for a comprehensive approach to ensure that various aspects of the elderly's life are considered in the design of technological solutions and the corresponding formulation of care and intervention processes. This will ensure that the dignity and quality of life of the elderly is maintained, while improving the efficacy and effectiveness of the aged care ecosystem. We therefore envisage a holistic and personalised care model, whereby the needs and aspirations of elderly are given utmost attention, enabled by technologies that understand and respect the uniqueness of every individual elderly.

Enabling Ageing-in-Place with Technology

Conventionally, technology-based solutions have been designed and implemented in their entirety by technologists. This has resulted in technology-centric solutions that are not widely adopted by the general elderly population and their caregivers, have minimal provisioning for personalised care and intervention by caregivers, and are thus ineffective in improving elderly wellbeing.

To support holistic and personalised ageing, stakeholders from the entire spectrum of aged care must be involved in the design and development of care and intervention processes in the technology platform, so that they can provide insights and observations that are essential for elderly wellbeing.

To this end, the technology platform to support ageing-in-place should possess the following attributes: unobtrusiveness, so that the elderly can go about her daily routines without being encumbered by the pervasive technology that monitors her wellbeing; scalability, to support the increasing number of elderly population that require ageing-in-place and facilitate participation and information exchange among caregivers; real-timeliness of data acquisition and processing, so that reactive care and intervention can take place; reliability, so that both the elderly and caregivers have confidence that the technology system will help to monitor the safety and wellbeing of the elderly and trigger alerts to the caregivers whenever necessary; sustainability, so that the support required to maintain the system is minimal; extensibility, to allow for the incremental addition of better and more sophisticated sensors and technologies in the future to enable improved services; and flexibility, to allow for personalisation of care and intervention.