After winning two best student paper awards at the 12th Conference of Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies and the 16th International Conference on Geoinformatics, Dr. Tang U Wa, a fresh PhD graduate from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of Macau, has won his third best student paper award at the URISA 2008 Annual Conference in New Orleans, the United States.
Since 1963, URISA (the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association) has been the premiere non-profit organization for the use and integration of spatial information technologies to solve challenges in government agencies and improve the quality of life in urban and regional environments. The organisation is considered to be the professional home of choice for Public Sector GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and IT (Information Technology) Executives in the United States and Canada.
This year, Dr. Tang U Wa’s paper titled ‘Data Capture and Data Mining of Urban Air Pollution: The Building-Based Approach’ has been selected by the Review Committee to receive the third place in the 2008 URISA Student Paper Competition. The organiser stated that Tang’s paper was deemed exemplary by the Review Committee and chosen from among an extremely competitive group of candidates.
In the paper, Dr. Tang proposed an innovative building-based approach that can better predict the complex spatial variation of traffic emission, urban geometry, dispersion and air (noise) pollution. Tang believes that this approach may open a new methodology in data mining of urban spatial data for environmental assessment.
The paper that Dr. Tang presented at the conference is a part of his doctoral dissertation supervised by Professor Wang Zhishi.
繼早前分別於第十二屆香港交通研究學會國際研討會及第十六屆國際地理資訊科學與技術大會上獲頒年度最佳學生論文獎後，澳門大學科技學院土木及環境工程系博士鄧宇華再次通過美國權威機構的評審，在其修讀博士學位期間撰寫的一篇研究論文，于美國URISA 2008 大會上獲中頒年度最佳學生論文獎。
美國URISA協會早于一九六三年成立，是現時美國和加拿大城市地理資訊科學的權威機構，一直致力于通過地理資訊技術協助美加政府改善城市生活素質。成員主要爲美加政府各級官員、資訊科技行業的行政和技術人員、以及高等學術機構的學者等。
在剛舉行的年會上，澳大鄧宇華博士提交的論文“城市空氣污染的數據采集和數據挖掘：以建築物爲單位的研究方法” 獲頒二OO八年度最佳學生論文獎（第三名）。鄧宇華在該篇論文中提出一種以建築物爲單位的城市空氣污染研究方法，以便能够更有效地反映複雜的交通排放、城市空間和空氣污染分布等。評審委員會認爲鄧宇華的研究方法具有創新性及可行性，可以爲今後有關城市空間和城市空氣污染的研究提供借鑒。
鄧宇華博士在研討會上發表的論文是在王志石教授指導下完成的博士論文的一部分。
Figure 1: U Wa Tang won the URISA 2008 Best Student Paper Award.
圖1：澳大鄧宇華博士獲美國URISA協會頒二OO八年度最佳學生論文獎
Figure 2: U Wa Tang and his supervisor Prof. Zhishi Wang.
圖2：鄧宇華和導師王志石教授
Figure 3: The Certificate of Merit.
圖3: 獎狀