Theme-Based Research Scheme Project
INTACT: Intelligent Tropical-storm-resilient System for Coastal Cities
To address the challenges aroused by complex urban environments and to mitigate tropical storm risks systematically, the project aims to establish an intelligent tropical-storm-resilient system. The system will be able to provide real-time tropical storm risk early-warning and assess urban-resilience to ensure the sustainability of Hong Kong and other coastal cities in the long run. The ultimate goal of the project is to reduce the potential for irreversible damage, improve safety, quality of life, and maintain economic vitality through the development of a comprehensive system.
The project is led by Prof. Yi-Qing Ni, Chair Professor of Smart Structures and Rail Transit of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and Director of National Rail Transit Electrification and Automation Engineering Technology Research Centre (Hong Kong Branch), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and has been awarded a grant of around HK$ 43.464 million from the Research Grants Council (RGC) through the Thirteenth Round of its Theme-based Research Scheme (2023/24). In addition to the funding from the RGC, the local participating universities of the project provides around HK$ 4.829 million as matching funding, bringing the total budget of the project to around HK$ 48.293 million.
Prof. Yi-Qing Ni is the Project Coordinator of the project. Co-Principal Investigators of the project include: Prof. Ahsan Kareem from University of Notre Dame; Prof. Qiu-Sheng Li from CityU; Profs. Qing Li, Songye Zhu, You Dong, Huan-Feng Duan, Siu-Kai Lai, and Si-Wei Liu from PolyU; Dr. Pak-Wai Chan from Hong Kong Observatory; Dr. Xiaoye Yu from Ove Arup & Partners Hong Kong Ltd.; Prof. Ricardo Vinuesa from KTH; Prof. Mengqian Lu from HKUST; Prof. Xiaowei Deng from HKU; and Prof. Yanlin Guo from Colorado State University. Co-Investigators of the project include: Prof. Chih-Yung Wen from PolyU; Prof. Darwin Choi from CUHK; Prof. Siu-Lai Chan from NIDA Technology Ltd.; and Dr. Ka-Chun Cheung from NVIDIA Corporation.
The project will take five years to complete (i.e. by December 2029).
Abstract of Project Proposal
Coastal cities face increasingly severe tropical-storm-related hazards, and the constant growth in these cities’ populations and businesses further intensifies their vulnerability. Hong Kong, as one of the most densely developed and populated cities in the Greater Bay Area (GBA), suffered much greater economic losses during Super Typhoon Mangkhut in 2018 than other GBA cities. The envelopes and interiors of numerous skyscrapers in Hong Kong were destroyed, such that enterprises had to be closed, business operations were interrupted, and occupants were displaced. The property damage accounted for >76% of the total insured loss, which was ~HK$3.7 billion. Globally, the cost of future tropical storms (TSs) could amount to US$9.7 trillion (13.8% of the current global GDP) by 2100. Hardly any coastal city is truly prepared to mitigate TS risks systematically. This is primarily due to the limited understanding of the nature and generating mechanisms of TS risks in complex urban environments across a wide range of scales in space and time. Without identification and management of future TS risks, coastal cities could suffer irreversible damage, thereby greatly decreasing safety, quality of life, and economic vitality. Thus, there is a need for real-time TS risk warning and urban-resilience assessment systems to ensure the long-term sustainability of Hong Kong and other coastal cities.
The proposed project will elucidate TS risk propagation in urban environments and establish an intelligent tropical-storm-resilient system to mitigate TS hazards. In particular, the proposed project will devise a framework that enables efficient and accurate assessment of turbulent flows from sparse measurements across a wide range of scales in space and time, and the quantification of urban-environment TS risks arising from complex urban aerodynamics. Although qualitative ad-hoc field studies have been conducted, no quantitative assessments of urban resilience have been performed, and the effects of newly emerging building clusters on airflows in adjacent areas have yet to be defined. The proposed project will fill this research gap by exploiting the project team’s multi-disciplinary expertise in urban aerodynamics, climate modeling, wind engineering, fluid mechanics, structural engineering, and full-scale monitoring to elucidate and model the underlying causes of TS-generated turbulent flows and urban risks. This will result in the development of a new kind of damage mechanism involving wind pressure–windborne debris–rainwater chain effect that is specific to Hong Kong owing to densely spaced tall building clusters. Furthermore, the proposed project will develop educational programs and policy recommendations for urban sustainability.
