CDE’s City Syntax Lab and its spin-off, Urbanflow, have been selected for the inaugural Google DeepMind Accelerator: AI for the Planet, APAC cohort. The team is one of only 16 APAC teams chosen for the programme.
City Syntax Lab is an interdisciplinary research group in the NUS Department of the Built Environment. It works at the intersection of urban science, AI and the built environment. It examines cities as dynamic systems in which buildings, technologies and policies converge, developing data-driven tools to better understand how urban environments function — from energy use and carbon emissions to liveability.
Meanwhile, Urbanflow is backed by NUS Graduate Research Innovation Programme (GRIP), and translates the Lab’s research into an applied AI platform for urban and building design, helping built environment professionals evaluate design options and make more informed decisions earlier in the planning process.
As part of the Google DeepMind Accelerator, the team will receive access to Google’s latest AI stack, including specialised frontier models, as well as tailored support and mentorship from Google experts. These resources will help accelerate their work on geospatial and environmental reasoning for decarbonisation, energy performance, thermal comfort and sustainability in the built environment. Through the programme, they will advance an agentic AI platform to optimise energy and carbon across urban districts, helping planners, policymakers and built environment stakeholders make more informed decisions for lower-carbon urban development.
The Lab’s Principal Investigator, Asst Prof Ang Yu Qian (Built Environment), said, “Cities generate vast amounts of spatial and environmental data. Advances in AI and geospatial reasoning models give us new ways to make sense of this complexity, and support better decisions for more sustainable urban environments.”
This also reflects CDE’s commitment to harnessing design, engineering and emerging technologies such as AI to address real-world sustainability challenges. Congratulations to the team behind City Syntax Lab and Urbanflow on this exciting milestone.
Reposted from CDE News
