Smart Cities and Urban Innovation Symposium

Brett Casson is responsible for Infrastructure Development and Strategic Innovation across the Asia Pacific region for Autodesk. Brett works with Autodesk to deliver infrastructure, construction and reality capture solutions on the largest and most complex projects in the region.

In addition, he is also actively involved with government digital advisory. Brett has spent over 20 years in industry working in the construction and transportation sector.

Professor Pettit is the inaugural Chair of Urban Science at the University of New South Wales (2015), being previously at the University Melbourne (20011-2015). The State Government of Victoria, (2004-2011) and RMIT University (2002-2004).  He is responsible for the Digital Cities course at UNSW. He previously developed the Urban Informatics course at the University of Melbourne and was the lead author on the ESRI online virtual campus course in GIS and planning which attracted more than 3,000 students between 2000 and 2010.

His educational background has been focussed specifically on the fields of spatial planning and GIS at the undergraduate and postgraduate level.  His Ph.D. examined the using of GIS and mapping technologies for undertaking scenario planning at the land parcel level across municipalities.  Professor Pettit is closely involved with a number of professional organisations.  He is a member of the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI) and the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA).

Internationally, Professor Pettit is a board member of the International advisory board for the “Geo for All” initiative. He is co-Chair of the “Geo for All” Urban Science and City Data Thematic, Co-Chair of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) International Interest Group on Urban Quality of Life Indicators and the Co-Chair of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) Technical Commission II Working Group on Geographical Visualization and Virtual Reality.

In 2015 India announced the launch of an ambitious 100 smart cities movement which aims to develop 100 cities to facilitate India’s formidable urbanisation challenge and economic transformation. Manojit Bose is closely involved with this initiative with previous and current roles within the government and private sectors.

He is co-author of the NASSCOM report titled, “Integrated ICT and Geospatial Technologies Framework for the 100 Smart Cities Mission”. Before joining NASSCOM he was heading the eGovernance mission team for one of federal states in India, driving various IT led initiatives of the federal government.

Manojit is currently Senior Director of Domestic IT and eGovernance for NASSCOM in India. He is an industry veteran with over 15 years of experience in IT, having worked with companies like Tata Consultancy Services and Cognizant Technology Solutions in global client facing roles.

He has successfully led client engagements both in Japan and in the US, over and above, leading pre-sales and business development initiatives both within India and outside. In his current role, Manojit is driving the Smart Cities initiative, amongst his other engagements in eGovernance, and works closely with the federal and local government as well as the Industry. Manojit holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from National Institute of Technology (NIT), Silchar and has done his MBA from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

Korea is the originator of the ubiquitous city movement and a forerunner in today’s internet of things IoT revolution. Dr. Youn Taik Leem is the Operating Head of Ubiquitous City Research Cluster (UCRC) and a Professor at the Department of Urban Planning and Engineering, Hanbat National University, Korea. Professor Leem’s research focuses on the analysis and planning of urban region on the basis of information technologies, such as geographic information systems and ubiquitous city. 

Before joining academia, Dr. Leem worked for more than 10 years in various global private conglomerates and research institutes. He published a textbook on ‘Geographic information system for urban engineers’ and has edited a book on the use of ‘Geographic information systems for urban planning’. He has also contributed to the book ‘Knowledge- based urban development:  Planning and applications in the information era’.

Sarah Barns is a research fellow, digital producer and strategist whose work focuses on the disruptive potentials of digital transformation on cities and place-making. Awarded an Urban Studies Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in 2013 through Western Sydney University, her current research addresses the governance and technology frameworks needed to support effective urban data programs.

She currently supports CSIRO / data61 Future Cities program development on data-riven city indicator development,and has established digital place-making studio Esem Projects.

She brings to her work on digital cities extensive experience as a producer & strategist working across the digital creative industries, and a passion for cities that build resilient communities & support future generations.

Domino Risch is BVN’s Workplace Director and a highly experienced Interior Designer. For almost two decades Domino has worked with clients from a diverse portfolio of industry sectors and locations around Australia delivering highly innovative and effective workplaces.  

With a passion for projects that are fundamentally aligned with strategic business drivers and that involve complex cultural change agendas, Domino enjoys deeply collaborative and engaged partnerships with her clients that deliver lasting benefit to all that experience them.

SK Telecom is one of the giants of Korean telecommunications with a major role in establishing Korea as an international smart cities leader.

Daejun Lee is a key member of the organisation being a senior manager for the IoT Solutions Business Office in SK Telecom (SKT), Korea. As a chief architect, he is responsible for enterprise IT architecture and has extensive business experience working in the Smart City Division including the running of integrated city operation systems, smart buildingd, and city energy management.

He has also had experience in the public sector, where he was in charge of providing public safety services based on video transmission by establishing the next generation network (LTE). Recently, he is responsible for business development tasks applying IoT within the public sector. Before joining SKT, he was at Accenture where he worked in various ICT consulting roles in South Korea, the UK and Taiwan.

Greg Stone is a Principal of Arup, and leads the Digital business of Arup Australasia. At Arup he is engaged with smart city initiatives locally and throughout the region. Greg has previously held roles as chief technology officer of Microsoft as well as being founder of the ODI “Open Data Institute” in Australia.

In his present role, Greg Stone provides design, strategy, insight and operational efficiency for Arups’ clients across the built environments throughout Australasia. Greg’s digital practice enables clients prepare for, and prosper in a data-driven future where people meet the built environment.

Greg brings expertise from across the built environment, human centred practice and global scale technology design and deployment. This enables Arup to provide existing and new digital offerings ranging from digital master planning, data modelling, analysis and machine learning through next generation identity, access design and human interaction design. 

Dianne Vella-Brodrick (PhD) is an Associate Professor and Deputy Director (Research) at the Centre for Positive Psychology at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. Dianne is the inaugural Director of the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program (2013 – 2015), an Editor in Chief of the Psychology of Well-Being journal and Secretary of the International Positive Psychology Association.

Dianne founded the Australian Positive Psychology Network and has co-directed three Australian Positive Psychology and Well-being conferences. Her work is well published in scientific journals and she has received over 2.5 million dollars of funding for her research on evaluating well-being programs using the latest innovations and methods.

She has a special interest in studying how time use and technology relate to physical health and psychological well-being.

Sarah Reilly is the Director of Cred Consulting, a social planning and community engagement consultancy she established in 2003. Sarah has more than 20 years’ experience in community and strategic planning and community engagement.

Sarah is highly skilled working within culturally, socially and economically diverse communities for clients such as City of Sydney, Bridge Housing, and NSW Government. She is an advocate for building strong communities through collaboration, capacity building and innovation.

Dr. Kondepudi has over 25 years of global business and product experience in a variety of technology verticals including smart cities, smart buildings and Internet of Things (IoT). Currently an Associate Professor of Smart Buildings and Smart Cities at the National University of Singapore, he directs the Smart Cities, Smart Buildings and IoT Lab @ NUS. In the past he has led global teams on smart cities at Cisco Systems, Motorola, Sprint and also the Electric Utility Industry in the United States.

He is active in providing strategic advisory and consulting services to both public (BCA, NEA, and ICCS in Singapore) and private sectors (from Fortune 500 companies to Start-Ups) related to smart cities in Singapore, India and North Africa, as well as on Internet of Things (IoT) and energy efficiency. He has also been a Vice-Chair for the focus group on Smart Sustainable Cities at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a specialised agency of the United Nations who developed 14 technical reports related to smart sustainable cities.

Sarbeswar is a PhD candidate at University of New South Wales. His research emphasises the smart transformation of cities in emerging economies.

He holds a double Master’s Degree in City Planning and Geography and served as Project Manager and Assistant Professor in CEPT University and LP University in India.

With a keen interest in building industry links between Australia and India, Sarbeswar’s current research explores smart cities applications in emerging markets and India’s 100 smart cities mission.

Dr John Barton (Jack) is a Senior Research Associate leading the AURIN team to facilitate Urban Data and eResearch uptake across the broader urban research community in Australia.

Jack has a PhD in Architecture from the University of New South Wales and has previously worked as a Research Fellow at the City Futures Research Centre, as well as running his own consultancy for over a decade specialising in three-dimensional geospatial Spatial Decision Support Systems.

Kean Huat Soon is a trained land surveyor from University of Technology Malaysia.

Kean previously worked as a geo-informaticist and geographer in Germany and the United States before joining the Land Survey Division of the Singapore Land Authority (SLA).

He is now the principal surveyor of the Division and the technical lead in the Whole-of-Government 3D National Mapping project and the development of the new cadastral system at the Division to support 3D Cadastres and automated cadastral processing.

For the past 5 years, he has been extensively involved in the development of 3D Cadastres and 3D Mapping locally and internationally. He won the Best Paper Award for his paper on formalising domain ontology for land administration at the 5th International Workshop on Land Administration Domain Model (LADM).

Shanaka Herath is a Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Business / SMART Infrastructure Facility at University of Wollongong.

His research interests include housing economics, urban economics and urban planning, and his research has been published in leading international academic journals in regional science, urban planning and real estate economics. He regularly teaches microeconomics, and occasionally urban economics.

Between 2012 and 2016, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at City Futures Research Centre, Faculty of Built Environment, University of New South Wales. He holds a PhD from Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Otto is a member of the Precinct Information Modelling research group founded by the Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) for Low Carbon Living (LCL). His interest is in applying life cycle information technology beyond the building scale.

As a consultant to the CSIRO and later co-founder of LCADesign he substantially contributed to the research and development of what has been dubbed the first green calculator for the built environment. He holds a Master’s in Science from TU Budapest and in Architecture from the University of Melbourne.

Dr Hawken co-convenes the Smart Cities Research Cluster at UNSW with Dr Hoon Han. He is currently working with the cluster and the City of Sydney on analysing economic heterogeneity within central Sydney using 3D GIS.

Hawken also leads a group of international scholars on planning ecological infrastructure for emerging megacities in the delta environments of Southeast Asia. The work involves developing ecological informatics in the cities of Yangon and Ho Chi Minh City using very high resolution remote sensed imagery.

Dr Hoon Han is a Senior lecturer in planning and urban development and a Convenor of Smart Cities Research Cluster (SCRC) in Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

His research is concerned with spatiotemporal dynamics of urban forms and the nexus of smart technology and human behaviours within an economic geography context. He is an associate editor of the Journal of City, Culture and Society (Elsevier) and editorial board member of International Journal of Knowledge-based Development and Journal of Korea Spatial Information Society.

David has a Bachelor of Town Planning (Hons) and a Masters of Public Policy and over 25 years experience in the implementation of major urban development and infrastructure projects in Australia and Asia.

Most recently David held the role of Executive Director – Cities for the NSW Department of Premier & Cabinet. Prior positions include Asia Pacific COO for Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation, focussed on the delivery of urban development and transport infrastructure projects for agencies including the World Bank and Asian Development Bank; CEO of a small investment business supporting renewable energy projects; and Project Director for large urban planning and development projects including the Port Moresby and Kuala Lumpur Master Plans.