Urban Vulnerability Assessment of Sea Level Rise in Singapore through the World Avatar

Shin Zert Phua, Kok Foong Lee, Yi Kai Tsai, Srishti Ganguly, Jingya Yan, Sebastian Mosbach, Trina Ng, Aurel Moise, Benjamin P. Horton, Markus Kraft*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This paper explores the application of The World Avatar (TWA) dynamic knowledge graph to connect isolated data and assess the impact of rising sea levels in Singapore. Current sea level rise vulnerability assessment tools are often regional, narrow in scope (e.g., economic or cultural aspects only), and are inadequate in representing complex non-geospatial data consistently. We apply TWA to conduct a multi-perspective impact assessment of sea level rise in Singapore, evaluating vulnerable buildings, road networks, land plots, cultural sites, and populations. We introduce OntoSeaLevel, an ontology to describe sea level rise scenarios, and its impact on broader elements defined in other ontologies such as buildings (OntoBuiltEnv ontology), road networks (OpenStreetMap ontology), and land plots (Ontoplot and Ontozoning ontology). We deploy computational agents to synthesise data from government, industry, and other publicly accessible sources, enriching buildings with metadata such as property usage, estimated construction cost, number of floors, and gross floor area. An agent is applied to identify and instantiate the impacted sites using OntoSeaLevel. These sites include vulnerable buildings, land plots, cultural sites, and populations at risk. We showcase these sea level rise vulnerable elements in a unified visualisation, demonstrating TWA’s potential as a planning tool against sea level rise through vulnerability assessment, resource allocation, and integrated spatial planning.

Original languageEnglish
Article number7815
JournalApplied Sciences (Switzerland)
Volume14
Issue number17
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2024
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 by the authors.

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • General Materials Science
  • Instrumentation
  • General Engineering
  • Process Chemistry and Technology
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes

Keywords

  • integrated spatial planning
  • knowledge graph
  • multi-perspective visualisation
  • sea level rise
  • vulnerability assessment

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