LKC FES researcher invited by NICT to conduct site visits in Japan and deliver talk at world BOSAI Forum

Lee Kong Chian Faculty of Engineering and Science academic and researcher Ir Ts Dr Tham Mau Luen was invited by Resilient ICT Research Center, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) to conduct site visits at Chikuma City in Nagano Prefecture and Shirahama Town in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan and deliver a talk at the World BOSAI Forum, which took place in Sendai, Japan from 7 - 12 March 2023.

The World BOSAI Forum is an international conference on bosai—a Japanese term referring to countermeasures against natural disasters at all stages, from prevention and mitigation to post-disaster management and reconstruction.

Dr Tham’s talk was titled “Integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) for Disaster Resilient Smart Cities”. His talk focused on the research outcomes of the ASEAN IVO project titled “Context-Aware Disaster Mitigation using Mobile Edge Computing and Wireless Mesh Network” which was held in collaboration with NICT. To read more about the project, click here.

“We demonstrated how AI and IoT remain a key challenge to realise efficient crisis management and disaster recovery tasks, especially during power outages and communication breakdowns. It is non-trivial to trigger warnings during disaster strikes, especially when cellular base stations are destroyed. To circumvent this issue, we integrated our AI solution into their disaster-resilient mesh-topological network called NerveNet,” Dr Tham explained.

Overall, the trip strengthened the international collaboration between UTAR and NICT. The academics were able to learn the real implementation of NICT technology towards the development of disaster-resilient smart cities. Dr Tham said, “I would like to express my gratitude to NICT for financially supporting the flight tickets, both international and domestic; transportation; accommodation; registration for the World BOSAI Forum as well as for the daily allowance and honorarium.”

From left: Senior Manager Suga Shunko, Director General Dr Inoue Masugi, Researcher Dr Cheikh Saliou Mbacke Babou, Dr Tham and Senior Researcher Dr Yasunori Owada during the site visit to NICT technology, Visual IoT in Chikuma City