research

Current projects

Social impacts of public transport investment (2025-2026)

This study reviews best practice, indicators and tools for identifying and prioritising social outcomes in strategic public transport planning. Project partner: TMR.

AI-driven predictive maintenance of transport infrastructure (2025-2026)

This project aims to explore the use of AI for monitoring and managing transport infrastructure assets. We will focus on monitoring the condition of road pavements in this pilot project. Project partner: TMR

Universal basic mobility in regional Queensland (2024-2026)

This study explores the concept of Universal Basic Mobility and equitable transport opportunities in regional areas. Through geospatial analysis, we identified transport disadvantage areas, barriers to mobility and aim to recommend policy interventions. Project partner: TMR.

Studying urban resource flows for strategic metabolic transitions (2022-present)

In this study, we quantify the inflows, outflows, and accumulation of resources, such as materials, energy and water, at a district-level, offering a perspective towards achieving self-sufficiency, efficiency, and resilience. Project partners: SUTD and Future Cities Lab (FCL) Global.

Past projects

Design principles for low-carbon transport infrastructure (2024-2025) A comprehensive review on design for low-carbon transport infrastructure from a lifecycle perspective was conducted, reporting the relative effectiveness of various design and alternative material options for road pavements. Partner: TMR
Crowdshipping using public transport (2020-2024) Explored the potential to tap on excess passenger transport capacity to enable sustainable movement of freight. This work was featured in The Conversation.
Life cycle assessment of diesel vs. electric vs. hydrogen fuel cell trucks (2020-2021) Real-world drive cycles observed in medium-size trucks were taken into account.
Point of Interest (POI) data validation (2020-2021) This study reviewed different POI validation methods that evaluated data quality and identified a set of metrics that can be applied to different POI datasets.
Designing for Adoption of Autonomous Mobility Services (2019-2020) Public acceptance of autonomous vehicles is a possible barrier to rolling out shared AVs. We examined the adoption and design considerations surrounding Autonomous Mobility Services in Singapore. Project partners: Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities (LKYCIC), SUTD-MIT International Design Centre (IDC) and Daimler.
Urban Freight and Heavy Vehicles Study (2016-2019) Optimizing urban freight transport is a complex socio-technical problem that concerns urban planning, transportation system planning, and infrastructure planning. We collected data and developed models to assess the traffic and environmental impacts of urban goods movement. Partners: Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Future of Urban Mobility (SMART FM), and partner Singapore government agencies, URA, LTA and JTC.
Collaborative Urban Logistics (2015-2018) We evaluated collaborative urban logistics solutions targeting goods deliveries to retail malls, in particular (i) centralized goods receiving stations (in-mall distribution), and (2) offsite freight consolidation centres. See data stories collected from retail mall loading bays here. Partner: IMDA.
Foresight Study on Urban Mobility: Moving Singapore in 2040 (2014-2016) A study on the future of urban mobility and transportation in Singapore, including an integrated vision for the transport, community and work. One of a series of foresight studies at the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities (LKYCIC), examining the Future of Cities.

Select publications

On passenger mobility

Miller, K., Chng, S., Cheah, L., 2022. Understanding acceptance of shared autonomous vehicles among people with different mobility and communication needs. Travel Behaviour and Society, 29:200-210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tbs.2022.06.007.
Milovanoff, A., Minet, L., Cheah, L., Posen, I.D., MacLean, H. L., Balasubramanian, R., 2021. Greenhouse Gas Emission Mitigation Pathways for Urban Passenger Land Transport under Ambitious Climate Targets. Environmental Science & Technology 55(12):8236-8246. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.0c06671.
Zahraei, M., Kurniawan, H., Cheah, L., 2019. A Foresight Study on Urban Mobility: Singapore in 2040. Foresight 22(1) 37-52. https://doi.org/10.1108/FS-05-2019-0044.

On urban freight / city logistics

Zhang, M., Cheah, L., 2023. Prioritising Outlier Parcels for Public Transport-Based Crowdshipping in Urban Logistics. Transportation Research Record. https://doi.org/10.1177/03611981231182429. Best Applied Research Paper, TRB Urban Freight Transportation Committee (AT025)
Sakai, T., Alho, A., Bhavathrathan, B.K., Dalla Chiara, G., Gopalakrishnan, R., Jing, P., Hyodo, T., Cheah, L., Ben-Akiva, M., 2020. SimMobility Freight: Incorporating Urban Freight Transport in a Multi-scale Agent-based Urban Simulation Platform. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review 141, 102017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tre.2020.102017.
Dalla Chiara, G., Cheah, L., Azevedo, C., Ben-Akiva, M., 2020. A policy-sensitive model of parking choice for commercial vehicles in urban areas. Transportation Science 54(3):606-630. https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2019.0970.

On life cycle assessments and urban metabolism

Yeow, L., Yan, Y., Cheah, L., 2022. Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Medium-duty Trucks: A Singapore Case Study. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment 105, April 2022, 103258. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2022.103258.
Arora, M., Raspall, F., Cheah, L., Silva, A., 2020. Buildings and the Circular Economy: Estimating Urban Mining, Recovery and Reuse Potential of Building Components. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 154 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2019.104581. RCR Best Paper Award
Yeow, L., Cheah, L., 2019. Using Spatially Explicit Commodity Flow and Truck Activity Data to Map Urban Material Flows. Journal of Industrial Ecology. 2019; 1– 12. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.12849. Graedel Prize for Best Paper by a Junior Author