1. Climate Change: Climate change creates significant impacts to environment in both global and regional scales. One of the on-going issues in Thailand is air pollution, especially a significant rise of the PM2.5 level during winter. To tackle this nation-wide environmental issue, AIT is now working with Thailand’s Pollution Control Department and Climate and Clean Air Coalition in developing a tool which will be used to identify the sources of the current PM2.5 in order to solve the problem at its root cause.
2. Smart Communities: AIT focuses on not only the concept of Smart City, but also one of Smart Communities which extends the research focus and the development to the rural areas as well. Two highlighted research studies: AI technology for helmet detection on motorcyclists in Bangkok and the combination of the satellite and drone technology in rice mapping which offers a faster, more accurate and more affordable method of detecting problems in rice fields and estimating yields.
3. Food – Energy -Water: AIT places great emphasis on various issues of security for future population. Various research studies on campus now focus on securing stable food, energy and water resources to ensure sustainable future developments. Example a study in collaboration with the British Council and Loughborough University in UK on energy generation from daily food waste on campus, a framework for river health assessment in collaboration with Foundation for Integration of water Management (Thailand), and a study on the alternate wetting and drying rice farming method which can increase yields and reduce water consumption in rice farming.
4. Infrastructure: AIT has conducted many research projects in Infrastructure which include Transportation, Telecommunication, Construction, Structure, Geotechnology, Energy and Irrigation. A project in Bangladesh was given as an example. AIT in collaboration with Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, Government of Bangladesh, UNDP, DFID-B, EU, Norwegian Embassy, Swedish Sida and AusAID assessed seismic hazard in Bangladesh, and provided technical advice in conducting field surveys of infrastructure in 9 cities in Bangladesh.
5. Technology, Policy, and Society: AIT in collaboration with the Mekong Migration Network has been studying the working conditions and discrimination in 4 special economic zones (SEZ) in the Mekong subregion, namely the Thilawa SEZ in Myanmar, the Phnom Penh and Manhattan SEZs in Cambodia, and the Tak SEZ in Thailand to ensure that employment is sustainable and lawful and that gender-equality is upheld. Another example on AIT’s research funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on the decentralized wastewater management for developing countries.