VIRTUAL Barcelona Livable Cities
Abstract
When Marco Polo visited the ancient city of Madurai along the banks of the Vaigai, he visited the Sangam era urban settlement not too far away from the iconic Meenakshi Temple. The Tamil Nadu government leverages the redevelopment of the Vaigai basin as a major tourist hub to showcase the wonders of Tamil civilisation. Recent excavations reveal a plethora of building styles and novel rainwater harvesting methods. However, worryingly, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) designated high emissions scenario (RCP8.5 – Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5) for 2050 is dire. This study reveals, for the first time, for 1940 to 2050 (using the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and other Government of India portals), a progressive decrease of Leaf Area Index (LAI) and soil moisture content over this region. Multi-scale Vision Transformers (MViTs) were used to generate truth sets leveraging their dynamic attention mechanism that captures fine-grained archaeological details. It is anticipated that the Archaeological Survey of India will make use of the results from this first study using a suite of computational models and geospatial data to better plan and learn from ancient practices, including this civilization’s priceless ring well rainwater harvesting practices.
Dr. Agilandeeswari L is working as a full-time Professor in the School of Computer Science, Engineering and Information Systems (SCORE) and Assistant Dean of Academics, VIT, Vellore. She has also got more than 80 International and National conference and Journal publications. She has around 19 years of teaching experience. Her areas of interest include remote sensing, Image and video watermarking, Image processing, Neural networks, and machine learning.
Eishani Purohit is a student of B.Tech in Information Technology at Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, having a strong foundation in AI-driven solutions, physics, and rocketry. She graduated from Welham Girls’ School in 2022, completing the ICSE and ISC curricula there, and is passionate about integrating computer science with aerospace technology & sustainability. She is proficient in Python, Java, CAD, and CFD, with hands-on experience in data analysis, machine learning, IoT systems, and rocket design;
Dr. Prabukumar Manoharan is working as a full-time Professor in the School of Computer Science, Engineering and Information Systems (SCORE) at VIT, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India. He has 20+ years of experience in teaching & research. His research areas of interest are remote sensing, machine learning, computer graphics, image processing, video processing, Image and video watermarking, medical image analysis, and pattern recognition. He has published 80+ research papers in peer-reviewed international journals and conferences.
Professor Satyajit Ghosh is a visiting faculty at the School of Mechanical Engineering, VIT, Vellore, and Visiting Researcher at the School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, U.K. His earlier substantive appointments were at Cambridge and Manchester Universities. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society of Great Britain.
1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
Thursday 17th July, 2025