Welcome to Amy Poh Ai Ling’s home page
Aims to bridge the gap between technology, society, and policy through innovative research and interdisciplinary collaboration. By leveraging advanced mathematical modeling, system optimization, and a keen understanding of social dynamics, my research strives to create sustainable, efficient, and publicly accepted technological solutions that address the pressing challenges of our time.
Research Interests & Expertise:
Smart Grids & Energy Systems: Focused on the optimization of battery management, thermal control strategies, and the public acceptance of smart grid technologies. Seeks to develop sustainable energy solutions that meet both technological and societal needs.
Technology Adoption & Policy: A keen interest in the societal impacts of emerging technologies, particularly in energy infrastructure. Explores the interplay between public security, policy acceptance, and technological innovation.
System Optimization & Quality Management: Drawing from a Master’s in Quality and Productivity Improvement, I apply optimization techniques to both technological systems (such as energy storage and smart grids) and organizational systems (such as quality control and productivity enhancement).
[Business Management] Investigate the impact of the marketing mix on customer satisfaction through a case study, deriving consensus rankings for benchmarking across selected retail stores
Applied Mathematics & Mathematical Modeling: Study reaction-diffusion systems and epidemiological modeling (SIR models), with an emphasis on understanding dynamic processes in both natural and engineered systems.
Exploring the Dynamics of Japanese Research Culture: A Case Study on Postgraduate Studies
This research examines the challenges of integrating Japanese research culture into the Malaysian higher education system, particularly in postgraduate studies. It explores key areas like research practices, institutional frameworks, mentor-student relationships, collaboration, funding mechanisms, and publication norms through literature review and interviews. Findings show that Japan values meticulous methodologies and hierarchical mentor-student relationships, while Malaysia focuses on local challenges and fosters more egalitarian dynamics. Both countries emphasize collaboration, though Japan leans more on interdisciplinary projects and industry partnerships. Japanese research benefits from larger funding and a focus on high-impact journals, while Malaysia also values local publications. The study offers insights to policymakers and educators on how understanding Japanese research culture can promote collaboration, interdisciplinary work, and international engagement. It acknowledges limitations but highlights the importance of precision, fundamental research, and timely dissemination for future global initiatives.
The result is published in the Journal of Electrical Systems
Research on building a model for assessing factors that influence public security acceptance in promoting smart grid
This research focuses on security measures, tackling electricity system issues that incorporate digital technology - the Smart Grid (SG). Through the application of multicriteria analysis and modeling techniques, we make a plan to define critical social motivating factors that affect the level of SG security.
Unlike traditional energy grids, designed primarily for one-way distribution from producer to consumer, SG uses the Internet of Things (IoT) technology to add intelligence and monitoring to every node. While Fault Location, Isolation, and Service Restoration (FLISR) bring benefits to the grid's self-healing capabilities, it also comes with security challenges ([1]). Despite IoT device design threats, there are also consumer security and privacy risk issues with most discussions focusing on cybersecurity. While the cost of the experiment is increasing, with new security, privacy, and open challenges in SG continuing to be discovered every day, expectations are rising for modeling the actual SG security measures especially on integrating psychological and policy aspects that embolden consumer trust, refer Fig. 1.
Fig. 1 Research approach outline
Public security acceptance is crucial in accelerating SG deployment with concerns on data privacy and cybersecurity arising. During my previous research, we raised the SG power supply system's issues and clarified specific security problems, including trade-offs with the conventional system. We defined and quantified indicators related to the large amount of information that flows in parallel with power during power supply control, extracted the important items, and successfully showed its relationship to ensuring the security of the SG ([5]). Motivated by this previous work, we would like to determine the critical social motivating factors that affect the level of SG security, by utilizing the security indicators identified. This includes tailoring the mechanism of security response of new users of SG in the prospective countries on SG diffusion. In addition, our new security strategic planning could bring SG electrification to be effective, by establishing a comparable setting, organizing and analyzing political perspectives (such as policy control and security readiness) in the energy industry, and finally, the market mechanism in the SG diffusion region ([6]).
Fig. 2 Outline of HoQ transform to HoSGS design
The characteristics of this research
The features of this research are the following three points.
(1) Assessing factors that influence public security acceptance in promoting SG and assuming the security level for a new area.
(2) Introduce HoSGS that models the actual cybersecurity concerns for SG social scientific phenomenon, and interpret public security requirements into engineering characteristics of the SG market design process.
(3) Tailor the mechanism of security response of SG new users in ASEAN 5 on SG diffusion, and examine practical guidance about SG privacy risks with detailed actions required to protect personal information related to energy consumption.
References
[1] O-A.Otuoze, et. al. J. Elec. Sys. & IT, 5(3), 468-483, 2018
[2] P. Żebrowski, et. al. Risk Analysis, 1-16, 2022 DOI: 10.1111/risa.13900
[3] D. Abraham, et. al. Future City, FUCI, 18(1), 57-74, 2021
[4] H-P. Karmele, et. al. PsyEcology, 11(1), 148-160, 2018
[5] A. Poh, et. al. Int. J. Modern Eng. Research, 2(5), 3347-3366, 2012
[6] R. Trivedi, et. al. Energies, 15(3), 918, 1-30, 2022
Research on information security systems for smart grids
Research objectives and methods: The importance of the functional requirements required for security systems in smart grids to respond to cyberattacks is analyzed using the method of Walsham (1996) based on the questionnaire data collected from each country surveyed. Measure the importance of safety factors, and use fuzzy logic mathematics and operations research methods to develop the House of Quality (HOQ) of QFD as the basis for increasing the security and security of smart grids.
Fig. 1 Research problem
Fig. 2 Correlation ring, threshold 0.4
Fig. 3 Model comparison
Fig. 4 Quality function deployment(QFD) - House of Quality(HoQ)
Research result: The researcher raised the smart grid power supply system's issues and clarified specific security problems, including trade-offs with the conventional system. We defined and quantified indicators related to the large amount of information that flows in parallel with power during power supply control, extracted the important items, and successfully showed its relationship to ensuring the security of the smart grid.
The result is published in the International Journal of Modern Engineering Research.
Research on business management and marketing
This research adopts a cautious approach to analyzing the impact of the marketing mix on customer satisfaction, using a case study of selected retail stores in Malaysia. The study applies the ELECTRE I model for consensus ranking through multicriteria decision-making, based on the 4P marketing mix model. Descriptive analysis is utilized to identify best practices among the four marketing tactics.
The findings suggest that outranking methods provide a solid foundation for developing the behavioral theory of benchmarking, which is crucial for shaping marketing strategies.
The study's practical implications offer managers guidance on designing marketing activities that leverage organizational strengths and address weaknesses or threats. The paper also highlights the effective application of multicriteria decision-making and ranking methods to forecast marketing trends, making it valuable for marketing managers seeking to improve strategic decision-making.
The result is published in the Business Strategy Series.
Fig. 5 Attribute – 4P’s – Retail Stores Mapping
Research on energy data analysis, clustering, and modeling
Research objectives and methods: The researcher engaged in the investigation and prediction of statistical characteristics in energy data. Utilizing Heinz K. Kleinet.al. (1999) method to analyze big data analysis, clustering, and modeling of the power sector energy-related companies in the United States and Japan.
Fig. 6 Actual consumption variability according to cluster size (IEA data)
Research result: A variability of energy consumption is the total variance divided by total mean consumption. Real data shows the convergence of aggregated variability with the number of customers. We investigate the mathematical reasons for this phenomenon, as well as the subtleties of convergence rate. We show that the results for convergence on real data are consistent with the prediction of a simple sum of random correlated variables.
In 2013, Amy received the Honorable Mention Award of the 1st Rescale University Program Simulation Research Grant in San Francisco, USA.
Research on smart grid development and region review
Research purpose and research method: Research on how Japan will lead other countries in the future in improving environmental problems including smart grid technology. Conducts development research and area studies on smart grids in Russia and Japan. Demonstrations of smart grids aiming for efficient energy management are being conducted in developing countries such as the United States, South Korea, Japan, and China. As a result, the practical challenges to achieving the effect have become clear. It is expected to develop a mechanism for improving the participation environment such as setting up bottom-up operations, for example, demand response, which is expected to have an effect of introduction, how to involve consumers is a big factor in success or failure, but the price that promotes participation in consideration of consumer's intentions.
Research result: Focusing on the fact that the main purpose of adopting smart good technology differs depending on the country or region, we investigated the situation in Japan. From the standpoint of leading energy balance measures in Asia in recent years, Japan is actively working on the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy toward a low-carbon society. As part of this, the Government of Japan has declared in the Smart Grid Pilot Project that it will invest in smart grid businesses at home and abroad. In this way, we analyzed the current concepts and strategies adopted by the Japanese government for green energy initiatives. The results are published in the International Journal of Computers, Information Technology and Engineering.
Fig. 7 Estimating Japan's PV penetration rate by 2030
(Source: METI)
Fig. 8 Japan Smart Grid Pilot Project Site
Discrete Allen—Cahn equation existence and stability of stationary solution
Research objectives and methods: We consider the full discrete Allen—Cahn model. We also consider the corresponding semi-discrete model: Allen—Cahn model is a reaction-diffusion equation of mathematical physics that describes the process of phase separation in multicomponent alloy systems, including order-disorder transitions. Interesting questions are, for example, stability and its convergence rate to a traveling wave or stationary solution. Most of the literature is concerned with the continuous model, however, the literature on the discrete model is not much.
Research result: We consider a semi-discrete and full discrete model of the problem and discuss the bifurcation structure of the stationary problem, then describe the asymptotic behaviors of positive solutions to time evolution problems. To establish the theorems we need to formulate the key comparison principles for discrete problems. In order to describe the bifurcation diagram, we review the fundamental eigenvalue problems for the discrete Laplacian. Combining these two tools we succeed to get the desired results for the discrete settings. More precisely, the critical value is μ_crit=4h^(-2) sin^2〖 (πh/2)〗, where h>0 is the length of the mesh for discretization and for the existence of positive stationary solution μ>μ_crit is necessary and sufficient condition. For the time evolution problem, the positive stationary solution is a stable separator when μ>μ_crit, and all positive solution converges to zero when μ≤μ_crit for the semi-discrete problem. As for the fully discrete problem, some technical assumption for h>0 is needed to get a similar result.
The result is published in Mathematical Journal of Okayama University.
A spatially homogeneous temporal oscillation of reaction-diffusion system
Research purpose and research method: We considered a reaction diffusion equation for an unknown function of two components, in which the ordinary differential equation for the reaction term has a nonlinear vortex center point. In the paper, spatial uniformity occurs at time infinity for the solution of the reaction-diffusion equation, and sufficient conditions are derived for an asymptotic approach to the time-period solution of the ordinary differential equation.
Research result: In this research, based on the viewpoint of the symmetry of ordinary differential equations, I discussed the general theory that can handle a wider nonlinear term using the general theory of Lie groups.
The result is published in Mathematical Analysis and Applications
Study on Explosion Phenomenon of Nonlinear Heat Equation
Research purpose and method: In a nonlinear heat equation, the phenomenon in which the spatial maximum value of a solution diverges in a finite time is called an "explosion". For example, the ignition phenomenon of solid fuel and the equation related to the vorticity of fluid is known as the model. In the study of the explosion problem, the time and place where the solution explodes, the shape of the solution at the time of the explosion, etc. are of interest. Until then, the phenomenon of the explosion at infinity had been analyzed for the initial value problem of the semilinear heat equation.
Research result: We extended the previously known results to analyze the same problem as above for quasi-linear equations with more complex diffusion terms. Until now, the parameters of the equation that causes an explosion at infinity in space have been known, but it has been proved that an explosion occurs in the entire space if the parameters of the equation are selected appropriately.
The result is published in Mathematica Bohemica.