Smart cities development is an emerging important Research and Development (R&D) direction, both locally and internationally. In light of this, the GREAT Smart Cities Institute in HKUST was established in 2018 which focuses on advancing five GREAT attributes of smart cities development, namely Green, Resilient, Empowering, Adaptable, and Transformative, as described as follows:

(1) Green: cities planned with due considerations for life-cycle environmental impacts, natural resources consumption (e.g. air, water, energy, materials) and wastes generation and treatment;

(2) Resilient: cities developed with infrastructure capacities and system redundancies to manage disruptions without severely affecting their essential functioning;

(3) Empowering: cities designed for people, empowering wellbeing, efficiency, innovation, and productive partnerships;

(4) Adaptable: cities designed with their infrastructure and systems adaptable to changes in new technology (e.g. autonomous vehicles) and global warming; and

(5) Transformative: cities designed for empowering their institutions and citizens to define and reposition their growth directions and strategies.

Smart cities research entails a multidisciplinary approach to address issues across a wide range of areas.

 

Faculty

Prof. Hong LO: Intelligent transportation systems, smart transportation, dynamic traffic control, public transport systems

Prof. Jack CHENG: Building information modeling (BIM), Green buildings and sustainable construction, Service computing and data mining in construction

Prof. Limin ZHANG: Geotechnical risk and reliability, dams and slopes, deep foundations and quality assurance, multi-phase flow through soils, and centrifuge modelling

Prof. Sisi JIAN: Shared-mobility, smart transport solutions, risk and behavior in automated driving, big data in transport, demand modelling and choice modelling, network modelling

Prof. Jiachuan YANG: Green Infrastructure, hydrological modeling, land-atmosphere interaction, surface Energy Balance, urban sustainability, water resources

Prof. Sen LI: Smart city economics, renewable energy integration, intelligent transportation systems, energy/transportation nexus

 

Representative Research Projects

Personalised Real-Time Air Quality Informatics System for Exposure – Hong Kong (PRAISE-HK)

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology - DiDi Joint Research Laboratory

Strategies for Enhancing Walkability in Hong Kong via Smart Policies

Smart Urban Water Supply Systems (Smart UWSS)

 

For more information about the GREAT Smart Cities Institute, please visit https://gsc.ust.hk/ or contact Miss Vivian Chan at vivian.chan@ust.hk