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10 Dec 2025 (Wed) 10:00-11:00 | Seminar by Prof. Tim Schwanen

The Role of Freedom in Urban Mobility Transitions

Speaker:

Prof. Tim Schwanen

School of Geography and the Environment

University of Oxford

Date: Dec 10, 2025 (Wednesday)

Time: 10:00 am – 11:00 am

Venue: CPD-3.16, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, The University of Hong Kong

Abstract

Globally, urban mobility systems are in flux, with ongoing transformations commonly ascribed to changes in technology, business models, and policy. While these changes are important, the significance of cultural changes should not be overlooked. One such change is the normalisation of particular, individualised notions of freedom. This lecture will first elaborate those notions, focusing on (the electrification of) automobility, mobility platformisation, and active travel. It will then argue that those notions of freedom restrict the set of trajectories for urban mobility transformation, and need to be reconfigured if urban mobility is to become socially just and fit for a climate-constrained planet. Alternative understandings of mobility freedom as collective, non-sovereign worldmaking will be advanced, and their potential for realising and accelerating just transformations in urban mobility illustrated through selected examples from around the planet.

About the speaker

Tim Schwanen is Professor of Transport Geography and Director of the Transport Studies Unit at the University of Oxford. He holds a PhD (cum laude, 2003) from Utrecht University and has held visiting professorships in Gothenburg, Sweden (2016-2019) and Ghent Belgium (2022). He is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, used to be the editor-in-chief of Journal of Transport Geography, and is currently editor of Environment and Planning F, a whole-discipline journal in Geography. Tim’s research examines the geographies of everyday mobilities of people, goods and information to address broader questions about the climate crisis, technological change, urbanisation, social and spatial inequality, wellbeing and justice, and the methodology and philosophy of research on transport and mobilities. He has published over 200 journal papers, plus a series of book chapters and edited collections, on these and related topics.

HKSTS 2025 Pre-Conference Workshop: International Symposium on Smart Mobility Systems

2025 International Symposium on Smart Mobility Systems

Pre-Conference (HKSTS) Workshop

Jointly organized by

Department of Civil Engineering & Department of Data and Systems Engineering & Institute of

Transport Studies, The University of Hong Kong

The Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies (HKSTS)

Engineering Management (originally named as Frontiers of Engineering Management), a Springer Nature journal supervised by the Chinese Academy of Engineering

Date: 6 December 2025 (Saturday)

Time: 13:00 – 18:00

Venue: CPD-3.04, Centennial Campus, Central Podium Levels - Three (CPD-3, Run Run Shaw

Tower), The University of Hong Kong

Aims and Scopes

This workshop centers on Smart Mobility, emphasizing the integration of advanced technologies

and intelligent systems to create efficient, sustainable, and user-centric transport solutions. With the rise of emerging modes such as urban air traffic and shared autonomous vehicles, new challenges are reshaping traffic operations and planning. The workshop aims to foster discussion on innovative approaches that enhance mobility accessibility and system resilience. We welcome both local and overseas scholars to attend the workshop for exchanging their ideas and insights!

Co-chairs

Dr. Jintao KE (kejintao@hku.hk), Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong

Dr. Fangni ZHANG (fnzhang@hku.hk), Department of Data and Systems Engineering, The

University of Hong Kong

Dr. Ryan C. P. WONG (cpwryan@hku.hk), Department of Civil Engineering, The University of

Hong Kong

Secretary

Dr. Bin ZHOU (binchou@hku.hk), Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong

Registration: free admission but registration is required (Click Here). All are welcome. When you enter HKU,

please show the registration confirmation page to the campus guard.

Tentative Workshop Programme on 6 December 2025

13:00-13:05 Opening Address by Dr. Jintao Ke

13:05 –13:45 Sensitivity of ITS Learning Models with Mobility Data- applications in transportation privacy and cybersecurity by Xuegang Ban, William and Marilyn Conner Endowed Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of Washington

13:45 –14:25 Exact Methods through Decomposition: Insights from Logic-Based Benders Decomposition by Roberto Baldacci, Professor, College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University

14:25 – 15:05 Physics-informed data analytics - exploiting domain knowledge with hard data in a transportation network by Yueyue Fan, Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Davis

15:05 – 15:45 From Self-Driving to Self-Organizing: Connected Vehicles as Catalysts for Smart Mobility by Lina Kattan, Professor, Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary

15:45 – 16:00 Break

16:00 – 16:40 Disturbance Mitigation Strategies for Scheduled Mobility Systems by Fang He, Tenured Associate Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University

16:40 – 17:20 Coordinated urban logistics: Combining public transit and drones for efficient distribution by Kai Wang, Associate Professor, School of Vehicle and Mobility, Tsinghua University

17:20 – 18:00 Joint Online Freight Allocation and Train Unit Scheduling with Reusable Resources for Emergency Logistics by Jiateng Yin, Professor, School of Systems Science, Beijing Jiaotong University

For abstracts and biographies of speakers and more details, please check the details here.

5 Dec 2025 (Fri) 17:00-18:00 | Seminar by Dr. Ghim Ping Raymond ONG

Advances in Micromobility, Fleet Electrification, and Autonomous Mobility: Insights from Singapore

Speaker:

Dr. Ghim Ping Raymond ONG

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

National University of Singapore

Date: Dec 5, 2025 (Friday)

Time: 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Venue: Room 612B, 6/F Haking Wong Building, The University of Hong Kong

Abstract

This seminar highlights recent advances in data-driven and intelligent approaches for enhancing multimodal urban transport systems. The discussion begins with micromobility and multimodal operations, where agent-based simulation, equity-centred network design, and graph neural network techniques are used to examine how individual travel behaviour, built-environment characteristics, and sparse sensor networks influence accessibility, demand patterns, and congestion propagation. The focus then shifts to the electrification of vehicle fleets, drawing on studies of electric bus operations that account for charging constraints, battery degradation, service reliability, and route-specific energy requirements. Trajectory-based analyses of electric taxi operations further reveal how spatial–temporal variations in driving patterns and energy consumption affect large-scale fleet electrification strategies. The seminar concludes with recent investigations into autonomous and intelligent mobility, including microscopic analyses of interactions between autonomous and human-driven vehicles that shed light on safety-critical behaviours and the infrastructure needed to support emerging vehicle technologies. Together, these studies demonstrate how data-centric, behaviourally informed, and operationally grounded approaches can contribute to the development of more resilient, efficient, and equitable multimodal transport systems.

About the speaker

Dr. Ghim Ping Raymond Ong is the Dean’s Chair Associate Professor and Deputy Head (Research & Enterprise) in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the National University of Singapore. His research focuses on sustainable pavement engineering, and multimodal transport infrastructure and operations, with recent work spanning micromobility systems, electrified vehicle fleets, land use-transport modelling, and autonomous mobility. He serves on Singapore’s Road Safety Council, the Land Transport Authority’s Panel of Expert Advisors, and national committees on pavement engineering, railway systems, and intelligent transportation standards. He also holds editorial appointments in several leading international journals, including Transportation Research Part E and International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology.