Date: 15 September 2023, Friday
Time: 4:30 PM
Venue: YEUNG Building Y5-303, City University of Hong Kong
Zoom Meeting ID: 967 1968 0176
Password: 123456
Speaker: Prof. Shauhrat Chopra, City University of Hong Kong
Resilience of Multimodal Public Transportation Infrastructure systems in Hong Kong
Prof. Shauhrat Chopra, City University of Hong Kong
Abstract: Cities worldwide are striving to enhance their resilience in order to withstand extreme weather events such as floods, storms, and extreme temperatures associated with climate change. Concurrently, these cities are aggressively pursuing their sustainability and climate change mitigation targets. This necessitates a rethinking of urban planning and a re-engineering of infrastructure systems in the urban built environment to ensure long-term sustainability and short-term resilience. In this talk, I will discuss resilience and sustainability of interconnected and interdependent infrastructure systems in the context of the multimodal urban public transport system. As it is one of the critical infrastructure systems, any disruption on the public transportation system, even if partial, could have a debilitating impact on a city’s health, security, and economy. The public transport system in Hong Kong, for example, accounts for 90% of passenger trips in a day, and any disruption could have catastrophic cascading impacts on the city’s economic and social interactions. This is particularly concerning considering the increasing instances of climate change-induced extreme weather events. A multi-dimensional quantitative resilience assessment framework, called the ‘Resilience Cycle’ will be discussed in the context of the Hong Kong public transport system. The utility of this framework in offering insights for improving the resilience of Hong Kong’s transportation system to disruptions will be discussed, while also considering its adaptability towards sustainable infrastructure. The talk will discuss the use of systems modelling approaches, such on network analysis and GIS, and tools like life cycle assessment (LCA) to address the potential trade-offs between resilience and sustainability in decision-making. Finally, I will stress the applicability of our findings from the study of resilient multimodal public transport systems in Hong Kong to the broader realm of real-world critical infrastructure systems.
Speaker’s Bio: Dr. Shauhrat S. Chopra is an Assistant Professor at the School of Energy and Environment (SEE), City University of Hong Kong (CityU). He received his PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, in 2015. Chopra’s doctoral dissertation was focused on resilience of complex systems, including economic systems, industrial symbiosis, and critical infrastructure systems at urban and national levels. Before joining SEE, he also worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Environmental Science and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, on the U.S. EPA-funded project focused on sustainable design of future transformative emerging technologies. At CityU, his data-driven research is focused on designing indicators for sustainability and resilience of the built environment in support of environmental decision-making.
