Overview
With over half of the global population living in cities, urban centers are having to adapt and innovate rapidly. Southeast Asia is fast emerging as a hub for smart city initiatives, embracing AI-driven urban development to develop more livable, sustainable, and resilient urban environments.
Recognized as the world’s top AI city in Counterpoint Research’s 2025 Global AI Cities Index, Singapore has launched the Singapore National AI Strategy 2.0 (NAIS 2.0) to help sustain the country's continued success as a Smart Nation. In Malaysia, the government has introduced the AI City Initiative to accelerate adoption and harness of Al technologies to optimize city efficiency and improve quality of life, and is co-developing a national AI Cities platform with Amazon Web Services (AWS), integrating cloud infrastructure, machine learning, and advanced data analytics to enable real-time urban operations and predictive decision-making.
In this backdrop, this event brings together technology innovators, urban planning experts and researchers, startups and government representatives to explore how AI is revolutionizing city governance and energy transitions across the region.
Event agenda (subject to revision):
3:45pm - 4:00pm: Guest arrivals and registration
4:00pm - 4:10pm: Opening remarks by SGInnovate and AWS
4:10pm - 4:40pm: "A Better Tomorrow: How AI is Enabling Smarter, More Sustainable Cities and Infrastructure" keynote by Dr. Will Cavendish, Global Digital Services Leader, Arup
4:40pm - 5:00pm: "Smart Cities, Smarter Grids: How AI is enabling the clean energy transition" presentation by Tri Le, MMS Principal Technical Leader and Enterprise Architect - APAC, GE Vernova
This presentation explores how artificial intelligence can accelerate the clean energy transition in cities by improving forecasting and decision making across urban power systems. It highlights how AI enables real-time management of generation, storage, and demand—helping cities integrate more renewables and cut emissions. Drawing on GE Vernova’s global scale and technology leadership, the talk illustrates how industry leaders are embedding AI into grid, and how cities can harness these tools to build smarter and more resilient energy systems.
5:00pm - 5:45pm: Panel discussion - Building Smart, Resilient Cities of the Future
Singapore’s Smart Nation vision and Asia’s urban transformation are converging at the intersection of artificial intelligence, geospatial intelligence, and energy systems. This panel explores how AI can serve the public good — powering resilience, sustainability, and better city governance through continuous innovation.
Donny Darmawan, Geospatial and Earth Observation Leader - Australasia, Arup
Dr. Victor Khoo, Director - Geospatial and Survey Division, Singapore Land Authority
Lee Yew Weng, Principal Engineer, Housing & Development Board
Tri Le, MMS Principal Technical Leader and Enterprise Architect - APAC, GE Vernova
Moderator: Tuan Nguyen, Public Sector Industry Partners (Government) Lead, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
5:45pm - 6:15pm: Networking and end of event
Schedule
Date: 12 Nov 2025, Wednesday
Time: 3:45 PM - 6:00 PM (GMT +8:00) Kuala Lumpur, Singapore
Location: 32 Carpenter Street, 059911
Speakers
Speaker's Profile:
Donny Darmawan, Australasia Geospatial Leader, Arup
At Arup, Donny leads the Data and Solution Development team in Singapore. He is responsible for connecting, integrating and delivering digital solutions through geospatial, data analysis and application development. Donny has a particular interest in growing our influence within new transformational markets including smart cities, energy and water. He is passionate about ensuring that wherever Arup operate we deliver excellence through our people and our projects to the benefit of our clients and society.
Speaker's Profile:
Dr. Will Cavendish, Global Digital Services Leader, Arup
Dr. Will Cavendish joined Arup in 2018 and is Arup's Global Digital Services Leader. In this role he is responsible for leading Arup’s work to support clients to take advantage of the major transformation in their world that is being brought about by digital and AI, including meeting critical sustainability challenges. While at Arup, he has worked at senior level with clients around the world, and in sectors as varied as property, cities, aviation, rail, highways, energy, the environment, and technology. Previously he was Applied Strategy Lead at DeepMind, responsible for understanding the groundbreaking developments taking place in Artificial Intelligence, and working with key partners to apply them for public good in areas such as health and energy. Before that he was a senior civil servant, including roles such as Director General, International Energy and Climate Change at DECC, and head of the Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit, working directly to then-PM David Cameron.
Speaker's Profile:
Dr. Victor Khoo, Director, Survey & Geomatics, Singapore Land Authority
Dr. Victor Khoo is the Director for Survey and Geomatics at the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) where he leads transformative mapping and geospatial strategies to support agencies and industry in Singapore. His team is responsible for the establishment of national positioning infrastructure; the digital transformation in cadastral survey; and the Singapore National 3D Mapping Programme. Victor also initiated the Digital Underground project in 2017, to develop a holistic ecosystem for the mapping of underground utility networks. Dr. Khoo was also appointed co-chair of the UN Global Geospatial Information Management (GGIM) in 2022-2025.
Speaker's Profile:
Tri Le, MMS Principal Technical Leader and Enterprise Architect, APAC, GE Vernova
Tri is a distinguished specialist with over 26 years of comprehensive experience in the energy market industry. As the APAC MMS Principal Technical Lead for GE Vernova, he provides regional leadership for MMS product development while simultaneously leading the regional MMS business practice. Under his leadership, the practice has achieved significant results, including recent successful engagements with IEMOP in the Philippines and TPC in Taiwan. His career is distinguished by a foundational 23-year period with AEMO and PSC. During his 20-year tenure at PSC, he held significant leadership roles across both commercial and technical domains, ultimately directing the Asia Markets and Power Networks businesses with full P&L responsibility.
Moderator's Profile:
Tuan Nguyen, Public Sector Industry Partners (Government) Lead, Asia Pacific & Japan, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
In his capacity at the Public Sector Industry Partners – Asia Pacific & Japan group at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Tuan works with technology partners, government and ecosystem stakeholders in digital government, smart cities, sustainability, etc. in order to help scale innovation and impact across the region. Tuan is passionate about science and technology innovation for economic and social good. Prior to AWS, Tuan spearheaded signature partnerships and programmes, such as an Open Innovation initiative that catalyses corporate-startup collaborations across Asia, and the Deep Tech for Good community that contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
