His Excellency Thomas Kupfer,
Ambassador of the Swiss Confederation

Mr Ng Lang,
CEO, Urban Redevelopment Authority

Prof Dr Peter Edwards,
Director, Singapore-ETH Centre

Distinguished guests,

Ladies and gentlemen,

A very good morning to everyone and a warm welcome. It is my pleasure to join you today to launch the Urban Lab. The Urban Lab is a new exhibition space by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). It is a new platform where innovative research ideas to enhance our urban environment are shared with the members of public.

Staying ahead of change

We live in a time of rapid innovations. In fact, embracing innovation has become a key strategy in overcoming space constraints and achieving high quality standards of living. We encourage test-bedding of new ideas. We empower cross-disciplinary research and development. We strive to nurture an innovation eco-system involving the public, private and the people sector.

Urban Lab: Bringing R&D into the community

With these objectives in mind, URA is launching the Urban Lab. It hopes to share innovative ideas with the public, for wider discourse and exchanges. To mark the commencement of a series of exciting exhibitions, I am pleased to introduce the first exhibition, entitled ‘Future Cities: Research in Action’, presented by the Singapore-ETH Centre.

This first exhibition, as you would soon discover, presents the fruits of over four years of cross-disciplinary research integrating expertise from architecture, urban design, planning, engineering, material science, computing and social sciences. This is the spirit that the Urban Lab hopes to promote – a spirit of collaboration across disciplines to address pressing and complex challenges in our urban environment. I will let Prof Peter Edwards, the Director of the Singapore-ETH Centre, to share more about his centre’s work.

This new Urban Lab is more than an exhibition space. In the coming weeks, the Future Cities Laboratory will present a series of talks, seminars and workshops to engage urban planners, academia, industry and the wider public on wide-ranging topics such as Singapore’s transportation planning, use of robotics in architecture and construction, using simulation for scenario-testing. I welcome your contributions and participation in these programmes. 

I am also pleased to announce that the URA, the Singapore-ETH Centre, and the Land Transport Authority will be signing a Memorandum of Understanding to develop an integrated land use transport model for Singapore. Called MATSim Singapore, this model simulates various travel patterns and commuter behaviours, and enables planners to better understand the interdependencies between land use, commuter profile and travel patterns. This model is also being exhibited at the Urban Lab.

Partnerships important in R&D journey

The Urban Lab would not be possible without supportive partners. First, I would like to acknowledge REDAS (Real Estate Developers Association of Singapore) for their active support and contributions towards the conceptualization of Urban Lab. REDAS members have helped build this island city over the past 5 decades. We will rely on them to continue implementing many more innovative ideas and designs in the projects they undertake.

Next let me thank The Global Young Scientist Summit (GYSS) for being a supportive partner of this Urban Lab. Now into its third edition, the GYSS is a gathering of young scientists, researchers and eminent international science and technology leaders in Singapore, many of whom are here with us today. We are pleased to have the participation of GYSS for today’s event.

We can look forward to many more exciting exhibitions at this Urban Lab this year.  They include an exhibition of unmanned aerial vehicles used for mapping, monitoring and modelling of our urban environment; and another exhibition demonstrating how geographic information systems (GIS) can help us visualise and interpret spatial data. These showcases allow us to see our cities from different and new perspectives. 

So, on this note, let me thank all of you for being here to witness the launch of the Urban Lab.

Thank you.