On 21 April 2022, the CKS-Build4People webinar “Urban Climate in the Planning Process” took place with inspiring presentations.
At first Prof. Dr. Lutz Katzschner, leader of Build4People Work Package #5 “Urban Climate” embedded the urban climate research into the overall Build4People project approach and gave a brief overview on the most pressing issues in regard of urban climate research.
This was followed by a keynote presentation of Dr. Chao Ren, Associate Professor in the Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong, one of the leading scholars in this field. She specializes in applied climatology and climate design, who uses GIS, and spatial modelling methods and remote sensing techniques to study urban environmental performance and develop climate response design strategies and guidelines.
After the keynote speech, Mr. Bunleng Se and Dr. Chhinh Nyda, Build4People Work Package #5 “Urban Climate” research partners at Royal University of Phnom Penh provided inspiring insights into the climate conditions of Phnom Penh and into the results from their measurement of urban climate in Phnom Penh. It became clear, that also Phnom Penh have already been suffering from urban heat islands increasing the vulnerability of the urban population, particularly in the poorer districts.
After the presentation part, there was an open discussion with questions getting answered from the zoom chat. Among others, it was discussed how questions of urban climate can be mainstreamed into the planning process or by which means urban residents of Hong Kong SAR achieve a higher awareness of issues of urban heat and how to adequaltey deal with it.
Link to all presentations (pdf-file)
The whole Build4People team would like to express its sincere thanks to all of the staff of CKS for preparing and managing this event, most of all to its interim director Samedy Soung and to Dr. Alan L. Kolata, who moderated the webinar in a very dedicated way.
This was already the 2nd event of Build4People’s cooperation with CKS. The next one will deal with issues of behaviour change.