Dr. Mingshu Wang, assistant professor in Geodata Science from GIP/ITC, won the 2019 RSAI Best Dissertation Award. He has been awarded for his dissertation about Polycentric Urban Development in China. It is the first time a UT-researcher wins the prize since the award started in 2002 and only the second time a Dutch University wins (Utrecht University in 2010).
For his thesis, Dr. Wang was partly inspired by Dutch planning theories and practices. Polycentric Urban Development is a popular urban planning concept in the EU and particularly in the Netherlands. The study applies a variety of geodata and computational methods to tackle real-world problems. “For my thesis, I looked at applications in China, but the analytical framework I developed is potentially beneficial for the development of other city-regions, for example, Almelo – Hengelo – Enschede”, says Dr. Wang.
Sustainable Urban Systems
Dr. Wang is an assistant professor in Geodata Science from GIP/ITC. He focuses on developing and applying methods of Geographical Information Science (GIScience) and big data analytics to understand sustainable urban systems. He has two interconnected research lines of cities from the perspective of people. At a macro-scale, he quantifies urban structure and city performances via GIScience methods. At a micro-scale, he explores individual human mobility via crowdsourced geospatial information.
