FRS lunch talk: AI in the built world by Prof. Em. Ian F. C. Smith

FRS invites you to join us for a lunch talk on AI in the built world by Prof. Em. Ian Smith of the Georg Nemetschek Institute and TU Munich, Germany.

Register external pageherecall_made for the talk!

Sypnosis:
The application of AI in the built world is very distant from the AI application test that Alain Turing proposed in 1950. The built world is characterized by capital intensive projects where the consequences of failure are high and society’s tolerance for failure is low. Objects in the built world are typically built outside over months and years under conditions of changing information and often conflicting criteria held between planners, architects, engineers and owners. The difficulty of such challenges is further increased by personal legal responsibility of engineering decision makers. Considering such particular conditions, it should not be surprising that adoption of new technologies and algorithms is performed in unique ways. This talk describes current and future work that will be carried out in a new, generously funded research institute at TU Munich. There are many opportunities for useful applications of AI in the built world. Examples of opportunities and risks are provided. There is much potential to extend the ideas of trustworthiness to the built world using concepts such as robustness, interactivity, explainability and uncertainty. The talk finishes with a description of topics that are currently under study at the Georg Nemetschek Institute.

Speaker's profile:
external pageIan F.C. Smithcall_made is the Director of the Georg Nemetschek Institute, AI for the Built World, at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. From 1996 to 2020, he was Professor of Structural Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Waterloo, Canada in 1978 and his PhD from Cambridge University, UK in 1982. His research interests are on intersections of computer science with structures and urban systems. In 2003, he co-authored the text book Fundamentals of Computer-Aided Engineering (Wiley) and the 2nd Edition appeared in June 2013. In 2004, he was elected to the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences and in 2005, he received the Computing in Civil Engineering Award from the ASCE. He is an Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, USA since 2011. From 2010 to 2020, he directed a second research group in Asia as Principal Investigator at the ETH Future Cities Laboratory, CREATE, Singapore. In 2022, he was elected to the National Academy of Construction, USA.