For Research, we seek to answer the question of "how to better plan, manage, and govern, high-density, high-growth, sustainable, resilient, and liveable cities through an urban systems approach and systems thinking?".

We do this through understanding how cities work as complex adaptive systems (CAS) through an interdisciplinary approach and deploying a range of methodologies and sciences like systems and complexity science. We also use big data, data analytics and science, AI and digital/ computational technology, as well as tools from engineering, architecture, environmental and ecological science, urban and real estate economics, urban planning, sociology and anthropology.

As such, we need a wide network and community of researchers from across NUS and beyond. We work with different centres in NUS such as TMSI, TCOMS, CSAC, RMI, ESI, and different agencies like LTA, URA and JTC. We believe such close-knit collaboration is key to leverage on each other's resources and capabilities to co-create innovative, systems solutions to some of the most pressing urban challenges facing our cities today. NUS is also best placed to take the lead in such research, given our existing network of renowned researchers and well-equipped centres and laboratories, working on ground-breaking research.