Cooling Singapore: The way forward

The fourth external page Cooling Singapore workshop was held on 1 June 2018, with the focus on the road ahead and the objective of scoping new research projects proposed for the next phase.

The workshop kicked off with a presentation by Prof Dr Gerhard Schmitt, lead principal investigator of the project and director of the Singapore-ETH Centre. Prof Schmitt spoke of the accomplishments of Cooling Singapore 1.0 and the relevance of the project, and moved into the overview of the 20 proposed projects of Cooling Singapore 2.0.

Constant Van Aerschot from the Cooling Singapore team then lead a short discussion session and guided participants through the world cafe session. At this session, researchers from CARES Cambridge, NUS, NTU, ETH Zurich, Yale-NUS, University of British Columbia, University of Princeton, Hochschule Luzern, Bauhaus University Weimar, PSI, TUM CREATE, and SMART presented their project proposals for the next phase. 

Agency representatives and other participants moved around the room, actively discussing, asking questions, and providing feedback on post-it notes. Researchers received a lot of interest and fruitful comments that could lead to future collaborations, new project clusters, and developments in their project proposals.

During the discussions, several participants indicated their interest in further research into the physiological effects of heat. Some also proposed the need to articulate the difference between active and passive anthropogenic heat in the future. Prof Gerhard Schmitt closed the workshop by addressing some of the questions raised during the discussion session.