Science of Cities Symposium (SoCS) 2026

Join us this Sunday, 14 June, for the Science of Cities Symposium (SoCS) 2026, held as part of the World Cities Summit 2026.

This year's theme, "Responsive Cities", explores how data-driven systems and smart city initiatives can create urban spaces that are adaptable, resilient and human-centred — not just operationally efficient, but truly liveable and inclusive for all.

Researchers from the SMU Urban Institute, SMU College of Integrative Studies and SMU School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University will be contributing across both symposium panels, showcasing research on urban climate resilience, AI-enabled urban systems, virtual reality, digital twins and smart city technologies.

🔹 Panel 1: From Sensors to Solutions – Data-driven Urban Operating Systems
• P1.11 – "Good Enough" Low-Cost VR Trainers for Maintenance Technicians (Vincent Chan Tuck Seng, Rajesh Balan, Swapna Gottipati)
• P1.28 – Reducing the Surface Temperature but Not the Stress: A Multi-Site Micrometeorological Assessment of Heat Stress Mitigation in Tropical Schools (Philip Kestel, Aikeen Lim, Winston Chow)
• P1.31 – A Fluctuation-Aware Agent for Modeling Emerging Urban Intents (Junfeng Jiao, Jiamin Bai)
• P1.35 – Lower-cost Sensor Approaches in Assessing Greenery’s Impact on Thermal and Environmental Microscale Conditions across Varying Greenspace Configurations (Aikeen Lim, Philip Kestel, Clayton Miller, Winston Chow)

🔹 Panel 2: From Solutions to Society – Human-centred Smart Cities
• P2.29 – Translate Climate Projections to Policy with Virtual Reality (Terry van Gevelt, Hui Ying Pak, Abhishek Saha from the Hydroinformatics Institute, Ven Paolo Valenzuela, PhD, Ho Xiang Tian, Aram Cho)

📍 What's on:
• SoCS & Poster Exhibition – 14 June (Sunday), from 12pm
• SoCS Spotlight at the CLC World Stage – 15 June (Monday), 3pm–5.15pm, featuring selected SoCS ideas in a conversational setting

We look forward to engaging with researchers, practitioners and city leaders on how technology, climate science and human-centred design can help shape more responsive urban futures.

See relevant links below:
Science of Cities Symposium 2026 Abstract Proceedings