Date 09.08.2023

Location Hong Kong

CUHK architecture alumna Cai Meng (PhD 2022) has received CUHK Young Scholars Thesis Award 2022.

Supervised by Prof. Edward Ng and Prof. Chao Ren, Cai Meng addresses the need for carbon emission auditing and reduction in urban areas in her thesis “Modeling High-Resolution Urban Carbon Emissions for Two Mega Urban Regions in China: An Open Data Approach”. The thesis presents an innovative approach that utilises open data sources to model the spatial distribution of high-resolution carbon emissions in the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta regions. To achieve this, the study first established a multi-dimensional urban form database of the two mega-urban regions using remote sensing and geospatial techniques. Secondly, high-resolution carbon emissions in different sectors were modelled using geospatial approaches based on the high-quality urban form data. Notably, the thesis identified the effects of detailed urban form factors on carbon emissions.

By extracting open-sourced and multi-dimensional urban form data and incorporating detailed and comprehensive urban form factors in the modelling, this thesis improves upon previous studies in terms of intra-urban variations and robustness. Additionally, it offers an innovative and generic methodology that can be applied to model carbon emissions for cities worldwide. Understanding the effect of urban form factors on carbon emissions can facilitate planning strategies for low-carbon development and global cooperation on carbon reduction.