Professor Alexis Lau is the Director of Institute for the Environment, Head and Chair Professor of Division of Environment and Sustainability, and Chair Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at HKUST. His research specializes in Air Quality, Health Exposure, Weather and Climate, and his techniques include analysis of large-scale geophysical datasets, numerical models, and in-situ and satellite remote sensing. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and served on a number of green groups as well as many government committees in Hong Kong. Internationally, he is member of the Scientific Advisory Group of the World Health Organization Panel on the development of a Global Platform on Air Quality and Health.

Smart Healthy Sustainable Built Environment 

Abstract

Hong Kong has committed to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Hong Kong, like most other built-up urban cities, energy saving and carbon reduction in (new as well as existing) buildings are by far the most important challenges we have to achieve. However, reception towards recent efforts by the government to promote and encourage energy saving through retrofitting of existing buildings was not very good; there was no increase in the uptake of energy saving retrofit projects after subsidies from the government dries up. In short, the government subsidies were not successful in changing residents’ mindset towards more energy efficient retrofits. On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented restrictions, proposed by the government and accepted by the public, highlighted people’s concern about health, and that they might be more receptacle to behavior changes for better health outcomes. In this talk, we shall describe how a “smart healthy sustainable built environment” concept may be able to help increase public interests in building retrofits for healthier built environment, with the energy efficiency and carbon / money saving as co-benefits along the way.