Work Environment

Eindhoven University of Technology (https://www.tue.nl/en/) is one of Europe's top technological universities, situated at the heart of a most innovative high-tech region. Thanks to a wealth of collaborations with industry and academic institutes, our research has real-world impact. In 2015, TU/e was ranked 106th in the Times Higher Educational World University ranking and 49th in the Shanghai ARWU ranking (engineering). TU/e has around 3,000 employees and 2,300 PhD students (half of which international, representing about 70 nationalities).

The PhD candidate is embedded in the TU/e-KPN flagship SmartONE, which constitutes an interdisciplinary collaboration between KPN telecom company and 4 TU/e research centers: Smart Cities, Wireless Technology, Photonics Institute and Data Science. The PhD candidate will work at the department of the Built Environment in the Information Systems group but collaborate intensively with his PhD colleagues from the other research centers.

Project

Cities can be considered as evolving living complex organisms, rapidly growing the next decade. Today, Smart Cities development is attracting researchers to improve quality of life in cities through innovative use of ICT in the built environment. The production, consumption and analysis of data stemming from sensors, meters and social networks are a central prerequisite to make Smart Cities 'smart'. Monitoring and optimizing smart cities with respect to energy consumption, mobility, health and resource allocation requires large-scale availability of data or even better: information. Only if "Big Data" can be enriched with semantic meaning to become "Big Information" knowledgeable systems can be built to make many of the foreseen visions for Smart Cities true and the cities can really become 'smart'.

Today Linked Open Data (LOD) is researched in many different domains as a methodology that support interoperability between partners in a building project. To disclose collected data for the public. Internationally LOD is promoted by the BuildingSmart (buildingsmart.org/) community striving for standardization of protocols, exchange formats, data structures, etc. One of the most important standards relevant for this project is IFC 4 (Industry Foundation Classes), ISO 16739, which includes a comprehensive schema and file format for Building Information (BIM) data. Initially this format was developed for supporting interoperability within building projects but lately it is also used for developing building models as part of (smart) city models.  A relatively new standard for city modelling is CityGML (https://www.citygml.org/) that allows for modelling of 3D cities and landscapes. Rich archives of maps are available today in many countries as open data through public authorities such as the Cadaster. These data sets need to be fused with (streaming) data sets from other sources such as (CO2, temperature, etc.) sensor data,  telecom network data, GPS data, camera recordings data, etc. Unfortunately the provision of these data sets is very fragmented due to lack of coordination, standardization, privacy issues, harmonization issues, consolidation issues, etc.  The goal of this PhD project is the development of an open standardized model for sharing heterogeneous semantic data sets to fulfill the Smart Cities ambitions.

The PhD candidate has to meet the following requirements:

•             a MSc degree in Building Science or Civil Engineering with a focus on ICT;

•             profound knowledge in Building Information Modelling (BIM) and/or Geo-Information Modelling;

•             information system design and programming skills;

•             the ability to work in multidisciplinary teams;

•             creativity and strong communication skills;

•             English proficiency

The duration of PhD candidate position is 4 years, the salary starts at € 2,222 gross per month in the first year increasing to € 2,840 gross per month in the fourth year. In addition, PhD candidates receive 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end of the year allowance. Besides this, the TU/e has an excellent package of attractive benefits for employees, a child-care facility, and a modern sports complex. Assistance for finding accommodation can be given. Especially for PhD students the TU/e also offers opportunities for personal development. We do this by offering every PhD student a series of courses that are part of the Proof program as an excellent addition to your scientific education.