Prof. Jianlei Niu of the Department of Building Services Engineering (BSE) has been awarded $34.6 million by the RGC Theme-based Research Scheme for a project entitled “Healthy and Resilient City with Pervasive LoCHs.” The project aims to create localized outdoor comfort places/hubs (LoCHs) in the urban environment by employing a scientific microclimate design methodology based on advanced modelling and simulation of wind, heat, and moisture in the early stages of building design and planning, with the help of artificial intelligence in optimisation. As the project coordinator, Prof. Niu will lead a team of 13 researchers from various disciplines of PolyU and other local universities, including his BSE colleagues Prof. Cheuk-ming Mak and Dr Ruoyu You, Dr Zheng Tan of the Department of Building and Real Estate (BRE), Prof. John Shi of the Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI), and Dr Ting-kei Pong of the Department of Applied Mathematics. The research team also includes 10 researchers from 8 overseas universities, and 2 collaborators respectively from the estate developer and software developer. Prof. Niu looks forward to working with other stakeholders from the relevant government departments and estate development industry to speed up the application of the research results.
This is the fourth project in FCE to be supported by the prestigious scheme. The previously awarded projects were respectively led by Prof. Tao Wang and Prof. Jin-Guang Teng of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) as well as Prof. Asif Usmani, Head of BSE.