Our highlights

In October 2020, the Smart Cities Research Institute hosted Nicholas Gruen – a policy economist, entrepreneur and commentator on our economy, society and innovation from Lateral Economics – in a participatory workshop on Citizen Juries. As commentator for the workshop, Nicholas discussed how Swinburne University of Technology and the wider Australian community could benefit from Citizen Juries.

While people are familiar with the concept of a jury in a legal sense, Citizen Juries are less well-known. They consist of randomly selected people – representative of the demographics in an area – that come together to reach a collective decision or recommendation on a policy issue through informed deliberation. This concept aligns well with the iHUB, a world-leading smart decision support platform at Swinburne designed for applied urban research, synthesis and engagement. Swinburne’s iHUB is an ideal facility to host Citizen Juries.

Nicholas explained to workshop participants that Citizen Juries embody the dynamic of unitary democracy. The benefits are that the majority of jurors feel the process is fair and helps inform them on the issues. Participants often comment on the benefits of discussing ideas with ordinary people to assist in paving the best way forward.

After Nicholas explored how Citizen Juries could provide much needed ‘equality of speech’ for all aspects of society, workshop participants were randomly formed into breakout groups to do activities around identifying potential biases people might bring to decision making by discussing six very different personas (imaginary possible members) of a Citizen Jury. They also examined how Citizen Juries could be formed to make them fair and discussed issues around the demographics and diversity of Citizen Jury members.

The workshop, facilitated by Professor Simone Taffe, who leads the Future Urban Decision Making program, and Professor Jeni Paay, program leader of the Future Spaces for Living program, proved a lively, thought-provoking and stimulating initial exploration of the enormous potential of Citizen Juries. A further workshop is planned for the near future to activate a citizen jury toward finding a collaborative solution to a real problem to help individuals make a difference.

In February 2021, the Smart Cities Research Institute held its first workshop for the year and the third workshop in its Smart Campus series titled "It’s Time: Transitioning onto a Smarter Campus".

This session focused on contributions that individuals can make in establishing transdisciplinary research opportunities around a smarter, sustainable campus, as the Swinburne community transitions back to a campus operating under the “new normal”.

To recap the workshop series facilitated by Professor Simone Taffe and Professor Jeni Paay, the first workshop (June 2020) featured a brainstorming session, producing ideas on key issues and shovel-ready projects for transforming Swinburne into a smart campus living lab.

In the second workshop (July 2020), participants used the key issues from the first workshop to discuss and co-design plans for actionable projects for making the campus smart. As a result, the four focus areas were identified: Safe Campus, Digital Campus, Zero Emissions and Placemaking. 

This third workshop explored:

• the four focus areas (Safe Campus, Digital Campus, Zero Emissions and Placemaking)
• where the collective quest for Hawthorn campus as a living lab is headed in 2021
• Swinburne’s planned rooftop living laboratory
• the latest in sustainable transport options
  
  

Joining this workshop was Matt Pirrie, Senior Associate from NH Architecture, who is working with Swinburne to develop an urban design framework and space management strategy for the Hawthorn campus. Two key areas being looked at are hybrid learning and working from home.

Professor Richard Manasseh gave an overview of the Swinburne Integrated Rooftop Laboratory project (SWIRLL) – an idea that grew out of a team of researchers and campus facilities people discussing what could be achieved by pairing radically different disciplines to serve contemporary issues. 

Professor Hussein Dia gave an overview of smart mobility initiatives, looking at sustainable transport options that allow people and goods to move to, from and within campus alongside flexible working solutions such as one to three days per week working from home.

These descriptors for the four focus areas (developed from the second workshop) were shared with the participants:

• Safe Campus: new pathways into campus, covered ways, community, safe link to trains, wellbeing
• Digital Campus: flexible spaces, monitoring energy savings, virtual spaces, hybrid learning
• Zero Emission: reuse of spaces, energy efficiency, working from home, low footprint travel modes, green points app or game
• Placemaking: sense of arrival, welcoming, social spaces to stay connected to campus, sense of community
  
  

Workshop participants were then randomly allocated to four breakout rooms – one for each of the four focus areas – to discuss and cooperatively design on-the-ground actions that the Swinburne community can take now to reshape and reinvigorate the drive towards a smart campus. 

The activities they participated in included:

• “what if” scenario – each participant responded to the proposition “imagine only 25 per cent of students and staff are allowed on campus at the same time; what would help make it a positive place to be for you?”
• brainstorming – each participant provided two keywords representing the most important considerations for making the Smart Campus concept work with respect to that group's focus area They were asked to look at all the words produced, group similar concepts, combine ideas, discuss the most likely to succeed, and at the end of the breakout session, decide on the best idea as a group.

The groups then came back to the main forum to share their ideas:

Safe Campus:

• better ventilation (windows that open)
• outdoor classrooms 
• consideration for those with accessibility issues (e.g. sitting on the ground)
• redesign outdoors (to enable the design of the outdoor classrooms)

Digital Campus:

• robots on campus
• interesting online presence 24/7
• interactivity (incentivise students to engage)
• randomly meet others – virtual water cooler
• buddy system (build collegiality particularly for first years)
• guest speakers
• gamification
   

Zero Emission:

• using outdoor space 
• mixed virtual and physical presence in spaces
• cohorts together – groups attend on particular days, so you know everyone
   

Placemaking:

• most happy working at home
• existing outdoor spaces (particularly with undercover shelter)
• help people come together in these spaces
• outdoor events and presentations in the new spaces
• data on campus showing how spaces are being used
• open airy campus – knock down all ground-level walls
• structured outdoor spaces – incentivise meandering
• campus as a huge park setting
• upper floors for meetings, tutorials, and labs as they block interaction with other humans
• outdoor power points
• mobile coffee cart
  
  

These responses have been collected for the consideration by the Smart Campus working group.

In a bid to find new ways to get citizens involved in urban design and focus our activity on real-world challenges, we partnered with the MIT Senseable City Lab to workshop Melbourne's future urban infrastructure in the session “Reimagining Urban Infrastructure for Smart Cities”.

Over 30 Swinburne PhD and master students took part in a week-long workshop during October 2018 with MIT staff. It culminated in the opportunity to pitch ideas to city officials, partners and other interested parties at MPavilion in the Melbourne CBD.

Read more about how the MIT Senseable City Lab and our institute collaborate. 

Read more about this topic via this news article. 

In November 2018, we hosted Carlo Ratti (architect, engineer and director of the MIT Senseable City Lab) and Professor Rob Adams AM (city design director at City of Melbourne) for the "MTalk: Digital Media and Social Innovation” at MPavilion.

The pair held an informed discussion on the impact of the technological revolution on architecture, engineering and city planning. Associate Professor Jeni Paay was the MC for this event.

October 2018 heralded the first Smart Cities Week in Australia. We partnered with organisers of the Sydney event to hold a Research Forum as the inaugural national gathering of smart cities researchers, government and industry.

The forum had over 50 participants from diverse backgrounds who worked to build researcher-practitioner collaboration across Australia and New Zealand and beyond. The forum involved diving into critical research needs for advancing and accelerating the smart cities movement.

Sound in the city has traditionally been regarded as noise: unwelcome, intrusive and stressful, to be eliminated by engineering or administrative controls. However, recent developments have emphasised the pleasant and invigorating aspects of urban sounds, and the design of urban soundscapes has emerged as a discipline.  

What do people need and want to hear in the city, both consciously and subconsciously? What is the role of bird calls, water sounds, or the ding of tram bells? Moreover, our senses are not isolated from each other. 

Designs need to incorporate thermal microclimates, the visual and the tactile, with acoustic elements. Acoustic engineers, architects, musicians and healthcare experts all have a role to play.  Held as a webinar in April 2021, a panel of experts probed these concepts examining them in detai.

Speakers

• Professor Richard Manasseh (Program Leader, Future Urban Infrastructure, Smart Cities Research Institute, Swinburne University of Technology)
  
• Associate Professor Lawrence Harvey (SIAL Sound Studios, School of Design, RMIT University)
  
• Ida Larrazabal (Senior Acoustic Consultant, Acoustics, Audio Visual and Theatre, ARUP)
  
• Dr Mehrnoush Latifi Khorasgani (Lecturer, Department of Interior Architecture and Industrial Design, Theme Leader of Smart Skins, Smart Cities Research Institute, Swinburne University of Technology)

What is post COVID Urbanism, and why do we need to discuss it? Everything about 'place' is changing, and the COVID pandemic has highlighted this.

On Tuesday 6 October, the Smart Cities Council hosted a discovery session with an online audience of 100 to discuss what our cities need to consider with respect to new mobility, e-commerce, and related innovations and disruptions within our communities, and what might be the urban planning and design impacts of this.

Speakers

• Professor Hussein Dia (Chair, Department of Civil and Construction Engineering; Deputy Director and Program Leader, Smart Cities Research Institute)
• Jessica Christiansen-Franks (Co-Founder, Neighbourlytics)
• Chris Isles (Economic Development Manager, Brisbane City Council)
• Sara Stace (Manager Walking and Cycling Strategy, Transport for NSW)

We hosted a public lecture at Engineers Australia in November 2019 featuring Professor Margot Brereton (Professor of Engineering and Interaction Design, Queensland University of Technology) exploring the future of smart cities from the dual perspectives of engineering and human interaction.