BUDS

BUDS Lab is a scientific research group that leverages data sources from the built and urban environments to improve the energy efficiency and conservation, comfort, safety and satisfaction of humans.

Check us out on LinkedIn, GitHub, and ResearchGate! Also, take a peek at our sibling labs in NUS with whom we collaborate closely - the Urban Analytics Lab (UAL) and the Integrated Data, Energy Analysis + Simulation (IDEAS) Lab.

BUDS lab

BUDS Lab is in the Department of the Built Environment in the College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS). NUS is ranked in the Top 10 globally in 19 subjects, including #5 in the Built Environment.

Projects

Cool, Quiet City Competition The Cool, Quiet City Competition – This Kaggle Community competition asks participants to predict smart watch-reported heat and noise using the city-scale collection of 9,808 smartwatch-driven micro-survey responses that were collected alongside 2,659,764 physiological and environmental measurements from 98 people using the open-source Cozie Apple platform combined with geolocation-driven urban digital twin metrics from the Urbanity Python package. This competition is a city-scale digital twin collaboration with Asst. Prof. Filip Biljecki and Asst. Prof. Adrian Chong from NUS.

The HEATS Project The HEATS Project – HEATS (Heat Exposure, AcTivity, and Sleep) is a three-year, multi-institutional project focused on improving sleep outcomes for people exposed to heat. Funded by the Singapore National Research Foundation, the project develops technological and behavioral solutions to minimize heat exposure for improved sleep using the Cozie Apple platform. It is a collaboration with Prof. Stefano Schiavon and Dr. Hui Zhang from UC Berkeley, Assoc. Prof. Jason Lee and Dr. June Lo at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and Dr. Tom Parkinson from the University of Sydney.

Project Cozie Apple Cozie Apple Watch – The Apple Watch version of the Cozie platform allows researchers to collect physiological, environmental and subjective data for built environment characterization. This open-source project is led by Dr. Mario Frei and Yun Xuan Chua and is a collaboration with Dr. Federico Tartarini from the University of Sydney and Prof. Stefano Schiavon from the UC Berkeley Center for the Built Environment.

BEAM Project The Cool NUS BEAM Project – The BEAM Project focuses on making NUS campus climate-resilient through comprehensive sensing technologies and applying mitigation modeling and infrastructural measures to improve outdoor thermal comfort. It is a collaboration between the NUS University Campus Infrastructure (UCI) and the NUS College of Design and Engineering (CDE) that uses a “BEAM” approach - Baselining, Evaluating, Action, Monitoring. This NUS project is led by Prof. Wong Nyuk Hien and is a collaboration with Dr. Marcel Ignatius and Asst. Prof. Filip Biljecki.

edX Data Science for Construction, Architecture and Engineering Online edX Course – The BUDS Lab hosts the first online data science course focused specifically on data analytics from the various phases of the building life cycle - design, construction, and operations. This is an introductory course that adds Python, the Pandas Data Analytics library and various visualization and machine learning techniques to the toolbox of architects, engineers, operations, and other industry professionals. Over 35,000 participants have taken this course since April 2020.

BDG2 The Building Data Genome Project 2 (BDG2) – The BDG2 Project is an open data set made up of 3,053 energy meters from 1,636 buildings. The data set is two full years (2016 and 2017) of hourly frequency measurements from electricity, heating and cooling water, steam, and irrigation meters. A subset of the data was used in the Great Energy Predictor III (GEPIII) competition hosted by the ASHRAE organization in late 2019.

ASHRAE Kaggle The ASHRAE Great Energy Predictor III (GEPIII) Competition on Kaggle – The BUDS Lab was the leading technical organizer of the biggest building energy-related machine learning competition ever held with over 3,614 teams who submitted 39,402 predictions. The competition included data from 2,380 energy meters collected from 1,448 buildings in 16 sites and had US$25,000 in prize money for the top five winners. The competition ran from Oct.-Dec. 2019 and was sponsored by ASHRAE and hosted on the Kaggle platform. This competition is a resurrection of prediction challenges hosted by ASHRAE in the mid-1990’s

SpaceMatch SpaceMatch – SpaceMatch is the Uber® of flexible workspaces – an AI-enhanced spatial recommendation engine that matches building occupants to suitable workspaces based on comfort preferences. A live demonstration was implemented in the SDE4 building at NUS and is the focus of a team within the NUS GRIP Program in early 2021.

Project Cozie Fitbit Project Cozie Fitbit – A Fitbit-based clockface application that collects momentary assessments of thermal, aural, lighting, and other subjective comfort parameters. This open-source platform is being developed for researchers anywhere in the world to use a methodological component.

Past Projects

People

Lab Leader

Prof. Dr. Clayton Miller Dr. Clayton Miller (ResearchGate)(LinkedIn)(Scopus)(Google Scholar)(ORCID)(Publons)(GitHub)(Kaggle) is an Associate Professor at NUS, Co-Founder and Scientific Advisor of Spacematch Pte. Ltd., and a Co-Leader of Subtask 4 of the IEA Annex 79 Occupant-Centric Building Design and Operation (ResearchGate). He holds a Doctor of Sciences (Dr. sc. ETH Zurich) from the ETH Zürich in Switzerland, an MSc. (Building) from the NUS, and a BSc./Masters of Architectural Engineering (MAE) from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln (UNL) in the USA. He is the former CTO of Optiras Pte. Ltd, a Singapore NRF-funded start-up, a former Fulbright Scholar to Singapore at NUS and a Walter Scott Jr. Scholar at UNL.

Researchers/Visitors/Collaborators

Ben Gottkehaskamp Ben Gottkehaskamp (ResearchGate)(LinkedIn)(GitHub) is a Visiting Researcher at NUS as part of his Master of Science in Resource Efficient and Sustainable Building work at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) with Prof. Thomas Auer and Christian Hepf. Ben holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the Jade University of Applied Sciences and is also Research Assistant at the Chair for Building Technology and Climate-Responsive Design. His work is focused on outdoor comfort using the Cozie platform with subjective and physiological feedback as well as spatial data.

Bianca Picchetti Bianca Picchetti (ResearchGate)(LinkedIn)(GitHub) is a Data Scientist Consultant who supports several BUDS Lab analytics projects. She holds a Degree in Chemistry and a Master’s Degree in Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery from the University of Buenos Aires. Bianca supports the data analysis process for the Building Data Genome 2 Project and the GEPIII competition.

Chun Fu Chun Fu (ResearchGate)(LinkedIn)(GitHub)(ORCID)(Kaggle) is a Ph.D. Researcher at NUS in the BUDS Lab. He holds a B.Sc. in Bioenvironmental Systems Engineering and a Master of Science (M.S.) in Sustainable Environment and Green Architecture from the National Taiwan University. Chun is working on the analysis of large portfolios of buildings using machine learning techniques.

Desai Wang Desai Wang (ResearchGate)(LinkedIn)(Website) will be a U.S. Student Fulbright Scholar at NUS in 2024-2025. She will be at the BUDS Lab studying the design of effective outdoor urban spaces. She is in the process of finishing a Bachelor’s of Architecture from Cornell University and has been working as a student researcher at the Cornell Environmental Systems Lab led by Assoc. Prof. Timur Dogan.

Felix Rehmann Felix Rehmann (LinkedIn)(ResearchGate) is a Visiting Researcher at NUS as part of his Ph.D. work at TU Berlin under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Rita Streblow. Felix holds a Bachelor’s and Master of Science from RWTH Aachen University and his work is focused on the digitalization of the built environment and district information models to support planning and operation.

Jean You Jean You (LinkedIn)(Website) is a Collaborator through her NUS Ph.D. work in the Sea-City Interface Project at the ETH Zurich Future Cities Global Lab under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Rudi Stouffs. Jean holds a Bachelor’s of Architecture from Cornell University and a Master of Architecture from Harvard GSD. She is interested in helping cities incorporate climate risks into spatial planning and design.

Dr. Mario Frei Dr. Mario Frei (ResearchGate)(LinkedIn)(Scopus)(ORCID) is a Senior Postdoctoral Scholar at the Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore (BEARS) and helps lead the HEATS Project and the Cozie Apple Watch project. He holds a Doctor of Sciences (Dr. sc. ETH Zurich) in Architectural and Building Sciences/Technology and a Bachelor’s (BSc.) and Masters of Science (MSc.) in Mechanical Engineering from the ETH Zürich in Switzerland.

Sobah Abbas Petersen Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sobah Abbas Petersen (LinkedIn)(Website) is a Visitor at NUS, Associate Professor at NTNU, Visiting Researcher at the SUTD Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities, and a Senior Research Scientist at SINTEF. Her current projects focus on understanding cities, the built environment, health and wellbeing and digital technologies nexus. She holds a PhD from NTNU in the area of Distributed Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Enterprises, a MSc in Artificial Intelligence from University of Edinburgh and a BEng in Electronic Computer Systems from University of Salford.

Synne Krekling Lien Synne Krekling Lien (LinkedIn)(Website) is a Visiting Researcher at NUS as part of her Ph.D. at the Department of Electric Energy at NTNU under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Jayaprakash Rajasekharan. Synne holds a M.Sc. of Energy and Environmental Engineering from the NTNU and is also Researcher at SINTEF. Her work is part of the COFACTOR Project that focuses on improving grid planning and the design of buildings.

Vu Nguyen Vu Nguyen (LinkedIn) is a Visiting Researcher at NUS as part of his Master Thesis work at the ETH Zürich with co-supervisor Prof. Dr. Konrad Schindler. Vu holds a Bachelor’s of Computer Science from the ETH Zurich and his work is focused on the convergence of IoT, spatial and imaging data in the built environment.

Wenhao Zhang Wenhao Zhang (Website)(Google Scholar)(Github)(ResearchGate)(LinkedIn) is a Ph.D. Researcher at NUS in the BUDS Lab. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Architectural Environment Engineering at the University of Nottingham, Ningbo and a Master of Engineering from the University College London. Wenhao is working on the application of reinforcement learning towards the improvement of sleep environments.

Yi Ting Teo Yi Ting Teo (ResearchGate)(LinkedIn) is a Research Assistant and Project Manager in the IDEAS Lab and is collaborator of the BUDS Lab. She is a graduate of the Infrastructure & Project Management (IPM) program at NUS. Yi Ting manages key parts of a project focused on mixed-mode ventilation innovation.

Yun Xuan Chua Yun Xuan Chua (ResearchGate)(LinkedIn) is a Research Assistant, Master’s by Research student, and Project Manager in the BUDS Lab. She is a graduate of the Infrastructure & Project Management (IPM) program at NUS. Yun Xuan is a co-manager of the Cozie Apple Watch project and is an expert in human subject research project deployments.

Alumni

Publications

All current and in-progress publications found on ResearchGate and Google Scholar

Join the BUDS Lab!

Do any (or all) of these situations describe you?

If so, please (contact Dr. Clayton via email) to discuss upcoming projects. Research funding, scholarships, stipends, and grant affiliation are available. Previous projects that exemplify curiosity in any of the above points are desirable.

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