19 MAR 2014 (WED) | 19:00-20:00
Wang Gungwu Theatre, Graduate House, The University of Hong Kong.
Speakers:
Professor Nick Tyler CBE Chadwick Professor of Civil Engineering and Pro-Provost, East and South Asia, University College London, UK
Professor Nick Tyler works with clinical, engineering, social science, arts and humanities researchers in order to explore exactly how a person interacts with their immediate environment. Nick's research portfolio amounts to some GBP20 million in funding from Research Councils, industry and government and he has established research projects in Latin America, Japan, China and the EU as well as in the UK. Nick is the UK PI on an extensive Chinese research and application project "Low Carbon City Development" in which approximately GBP2 billion is being invested by Chinese cities in the development of practical low carbon initiatives in cities including Guangzhou, Shanghai and Nanyang. He is developing national policy with the Peruvian and Colombian governments in relation to accessible low carbon transport as part of a project funded by the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, writing a draft NAMA for Peru (2012) and a National Strategy for Transport in Low Carbon Cities for the Colombian Government (2013). He is currently working with universities and the Keidanren in Japan on university education and with the British Embassy in Tokyo on healthy ageing and transport environments in Japan and with a consortium of UK and Japanese universities on transforming the international engagement of universities ad industry in Japan and the UK. He is a member of the EPSRC Experts Group on Infrastructure. Apart from being the Director of the CRUCIBLE Centre and the Pedestrian Accessibility and Movement Environment Laboratory (PAMELA), he is a Co-investigator on the GBP6m EPSRC Programme Grant "Transforming the Engineering of Cities", is a Principal Investigator developing an invisible exoskeleton on a GBP1m EPSRC project, a Co-I on an EPSRC project to develop a new generation of hybrid buses, a Co-I on a GBP3.4m EPSRC/ESRC project to investigate the future financing of infrastructure and a Co-I on a GBP2.4m ESRC-NIHR project to investigate how people with dementia see and interact with their immediate environment. He transformed the department's teaching portfolio to make the education of civil engineers pertinent for the needs of the 21st century.
Nick is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Transport Research Foundation. He was appointed a CBE in the 2011 New Year's Honours for services to technology. In 2013, he gave the Inaugural Tan Swan Beng Lecture on Sustainable Cities at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore. He was Head of the Department of Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering at UCL from 2003 to December 2013.
Abstract:
What are the objectives for a transport system in the 21st century? This lecture explores the extent to which the aims and targets for transport systems have become outdated, outmoded and unhelpful in a world in which rapid change is rampant - in terms of climate, global economics, politics and trade. The approaches we have adopted over the last 50 years or so and the techniques we have developed in order to facilitate their implementation have become increasingly unable to address the modern problems we face today. Bearing in mind Brundtland's definition of sustainable development (as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations), this talk opens new ways of thinking about transport and its role in society. This could demand new approaches and techniques - and possibly new science - in order to ensure the sustainability of the planet for the future. Some suggestions for these new sciences and engineering approaches will be outlined.
Organizers:
Institute of Transport Studies, HKU (ITS)
Link:
