Student Seminar by Ms. Busra Bayrak on Jul 29, 2026, 3:00PM

Title: HFCV Adoption Under Externality: Low- and High-Travel-Distance Consumers

Speaker: Ms. Busra Bayrak (Management School, University of Liverpool)

Date: Jul 29, 2026 (Wednesday)

Time: 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Venue: Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing Two, G/F, Run Run Shaw Building, HKU

Registration Link: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/sh8i2iympQ

ITS Student Committee will provide a beverage for registered participants.

Abstract: Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs) are increasingly viewed as a viable low-carbon option for transport decarbonization. Yet, HFCV adoption remains limited, mainly due to consumer anxiety associated with safety and convenience under an underdeveloped hydrogen refueling infrastructure. This paper studies HFCV adoption when consumer utility is shaped by network externalities. We develop an analytical adoption model with two heterogeneous customer segments, high-distance fleet users and low-distance private users, and derive equilibrium prices, demands, and profits. Our results show that (i) adoption can progress more rapidly among low-distance users, as segment-level usage intensity and perceived inconvenience shape adoption differently in the presence of externalities, (ii) the equilibrium can exceed the socially optimal adoption level depending on consumer patience and infrastructure maturity, (iii) the planner’s policy should combine infrastructure investment to resolve over-adoption with demand-side subsidies to close the residual under-adoption gap; neither instrument alone is sufficient. The analysis offers insights for manufacturers and policymakers seeking to accelerate HFCV adoption and address infrastructure related anxiety.

Bios: Busra Bayrak is a PhD student in the Department of Operations and Supply Chain Management at University of Liverpool Management School. Her research interest focuses on sustainable operations and supply chain management, particularly the interplay between the triple bottom line, government interventions, consumer behavior, and product adoption/diffusion processes.

Student Seminar by Ms. Qingying He on May 28, 2026, 3:00PM

Title: Coordinated path planning of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) for maritime monitoring

Speaker: Ms. Qingying He (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)

Date: May 28, 2026 (Thursday)

Time: 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Venue: Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing Two, HKU

Registration Link: https://forms.office.com/r/YuBwcqw9y2

ITS Student Committee will provide a beverage for registered participants.

Abstract: Maritime monitoring often involves dispersed tasks over open water, where fixed support infrastructure is limited and costly to deploy and maintain. UAVs provide fast aerial sensing, while USVs can operate for longer periods and support UAV launch, recovery, and energy replenishment. The key planning challenge is to coordinate UAV sorties and USV routes so that monitoring tasks and launch--recovery operations remain feasible. This talk presents optimization models and scalable algorithms for UAV--USV coordinated path planning. The study starts from a deterministic setting, where coordination and synchronization are captured through a mixed-integer linear programming model and solved by customized exact and heuristic algorithms. It then considers travel time uncertainty caused by weather, waves, and currents, and develops a robust optimization framework to improve synchronization reliability. It further addresses real-time planning with imperfect operational information, where a cluster-wise robust optimization method is used to update decisions while accounting for heterogeneous forecast errors. Numerical experiments in the context of Guangdong--Hong Kong--Macao Greater Bay Area show that the proposed methods are effective, computationally efficient, and reliable under uncertainty. The framework provides a practical decision-support tool for operating heterogeneous autonomous systems in uncertain maritime environments.

Bios: Qingying He is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, under the supervision of Prof. Wei Liu. She holds a BSc in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics from Northeastern University and an MSc in Computational Mathematical Finance (with Distinction) from University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on transportation network modeling, optimization, and data-driven decision-making, with an emphasis on multi-modal coordination across unmanned aerial, surface, and ground vehicles. Her research has been published in world-leading journals in the field, such as TR Part B, TR Part E, IEEE T-ITS and Transportmetrica B.

Student Seminar by Mr. Ka Yiu NG on May 22, 2026, 11:00AM

Title: More-than-Human Urban Accessibility: Veterinary Care and Pet-Friendly Public Transport

Speaker: Mr. Ka Yiu (Benjamin) NG (Department of Geography)

Date: May 22, 2026 (Friday)

Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 nn

Venue: Room 1010, CLL, Department of Geography, 10/F, The Jockey Club Tower, The University of Hong Kong

Registration Link: https://forms.office.com/r/ehQUVw9vAM

ITS Student Committee will provide a beverage for registered participants.

Abstract: Traditional urban accessibility research largely focuses on people’s access to resources, offering only a limited account of how more-than-human beings may restrict or enable human accessibility. Scholarship in New Animal Geography calls for closer attention to the agency and subjectivity of more-than-human beings, and to the ways their encounters with humans shape reciprocal relationships. Against a backdrop of rising pet ownership globally and recent debate in Hong Kong about pet-friendly public transport initiatives, this seminar introduces: (1) the current literature on spatial access to veterinary care worldwide; (2) spatial access to veterinary care in Hong Kong; and (3) a preliminary exploration of public perceptions of pet-friendly public transport in Hong Kong.

Bios: Mr. NG holds a Bachelor of Social Sciences (First Class Honours) in Geography & Urban Governance and an MPhil in Geography from HKU. He has gained academic and applied research experience in transport and health through training at HKU, working at UNICEF Hong Kong (Advocacy Officer, Policy & Research) and at the Science Unit at Lingnan University (System Officer) before joining the PhD programme in 2025. His research interests sit at the intersection of GIScience, transport, and health, with a current focus on: (1) applied 3D GIS and accessibility modeling; (2) the built environment and health; and (3) pet-friendly public transportation.