Fengyuan (Simon) Han: A New Analytical Model to Support Railway Infrastructure and Urban Development in Low Income Countries

Supervisor: Prof Ying Jin

Research overview:

Fengyuan (Simon) Han is an urban planner and urban data scientist supervised by Professor Ying Jin, jointly funded by the Cambridge Trust and the China Scholarship Council. He received his BSc in Urban Planning and Design (First Class) from University College London and his MPhil in Architecture and Urban Studies from the University of Cambridge. He also interned in the Urban Finance section of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme in Nairobi, Kenya, where he discovered his research interests in urban economics and infrastructure development. Simon is also a member of the Collective Intelligence & Design Group, led by Dr. Ramit Debnath, exploring computational urban science methods.

Biography:

Fengyuan (Simon) Han’s research focuses on the construction, validation, and decision-making practices of quantitative urban models, particularly in the fields of urban economics, spatial analysis, and infrastructure development.

Simon’s PhD program is a collaboration with the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, exploring the critical factors and associations between urban economic development and railway infrastructure development. His research develops mathematical urban models to simulate, optimize, and evaluate the performance of proposed or constructed railways. The models also integrate spatial Multicriteria Decision-making Analysis (MCDA) to incorporate planners' and local communities’ qualitative perspectives, particularly in the context of cities in the Global South.

Simon is also fascinated by the application of big urban data techniques, such as sentiment analysis, text mining, and machine learning algorithms, in empirical urban analysis. He aims to apply these innovative machine learning techniques to spatial dimensions and practices in empirical urban economic analysis. Additionally, he is involved in research projects within the Collective Intelligence & Design Group, where he conducts computational urban research on urban climate change by leveraging global Night-Time Light datasets.

Simon’s research interests align closely with those of the Cities and Transport Research Group, led by Professor Ying Jin. His work specializes in the analysis and decision-making processes for High-Speed Railways (HSR). He also investigates the implications of HSR on urban economic growth using frameworks such as spatial equilibrium models and urban agglomeration models.