As Australia and many other countries begin to “flatten the curve”, attention is now firmly turning to economic recovery and a return to some semblance of societal “normality”. Smart sensing has a critical role to play not only in the clinical diagnosis and therapy of COVID-19 but in the detection and compliance factors that will be required as societies and economies emerge from lockdown measures. 

Across a series of five virtual workshops, the NSSN brings together researchers, industry and government to explore innovative solutions to address COVID-19 issues where smart sensing can play a critical role.

This workshop focusses on Data & AI-assisted Decision Making for a Post-Pandemic Life.

Before COVID-19, big cities in Australia and around the world were already on a steep trajectory in suffering from excessive travel times and urban congestion. Proposals have been around for years to provide motivations for commuters to change their travel patterns to ease bottlenecks in peak hours. One example would be the NSSN DataHack Hackathon at CEBIT last year. The challenge was to develop incentives for road users to change their mobility pattern. 

With the fear of returning to public transport, the traffic flows after the COVID-19 lockdown could experience a boost on travel demands and make congestion even worse. However, adoptions are also observed among people regarding working from home and grocery purchase patterns. As a result, when the restrictions are lifted, it is possible that people are willing to change the way they work, the working hours they adapt and logistics pattern they plan, which can make considerable differences to the current transportation system.

There is a need for the identification of relevant datasets to elicit traveller’ behaviours, which are a combination of their personality traits, immediate needs and leisure purposes, to name a few. A fusion of different data sources is then anticipated for travel demand, individual travel prediction and zone prediction for transport planning. 

There is also a need to utilise the travel behaviours elicited and engage with road users for them to adapt to a dynamic, optimised, and good-for-all travel plan to ease congestion in peak hours. 

This workshop is by invitation only. If you feel you have a valuable contribution and wish to participate, please contact Dr Zhitao Xiong.