The TUD VR Research Lab
Positioned at the intersection of civil engineering, information technology, and urban planning, scAInce is a virtual reality lab where participants can experience living in future cities and explore future mobility options such as autonomous vehicles, micromobility, and multimodal transportation. Prof. Eva Kassens-Noor Ph.D., chair of the Institute for Traffic Planning and Traffic Engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt (TUDa) is leading scAInce. The lab was established in 2022 through a collaboration between TUDa, NUMENA, and Spectra. As new technologies are transforming global society, this lab aims to benefit students and scholars in understanding the fundamental changes in human behavior and urban life with the introduction of new solutions to sustainability, resilient infrastructures, and artificial intelligence.
Published Research Papers
Title:
Proposing the foundations of scAInce by exploring the future of artificially intelligent, sustainable, and resilient mega projects
Authors:
Eva Kassens-Noor, Kip Darcy, Andreea Ion Cojocaru, Ryan Rzepecki, Sunghun Jang, Wei Jiang, Tobias Monzert, Meng Cai, and Matthew Crittenden
Abstract:
Artificial intelligence is software based; mega projects are large physical infrastructures. We use exploratory research in understanding the merger of both by asking what artificially intelligent, sustainable, and resilient mega projects are and what their underlying theory is. Thus, the goal of the paper is to define an artificially intelligent mega project and identify its theory. To do so, we conducted a literature review on the two different topics and exemplified current mergers of AI and mega projects through two cases. We propose a definition for artificially intelligent mega projects and suggest consequentially an embedded new theory we call scAInce. We suggest that scAInce is a new research field, that explores the influences and impacts of artificial intelligence on our world. We conceptualize how AI mega projects as virtual AI futures might enable sustainability in our built environment. It ends with contributing a definition of what artificially intelligent mega projects are.
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