Recently, the undergraduate graduation thesis “Analysis of the Impact of Extreme Weather Events on Human Mobility at an Individual Level” of Xinyuan Zhang, a direct PhD student of the research group, was rated as an outstanding thesis in the 2020 Comprehensive Thesis Training of Tsinghua University. Xinyuan’s thesis was recommended to participate in the selection of outstanding undergraduate graduation design of the Beijing general institutes of higher education.
Figure 1 Examples of changes in individuals’ displacement trajectories and range of activities under the influence of typhoons
Xinyuan Zhang is a senior student in the Construction Management Department of Tsinghua University, and her graduation design project is supervised by Associate Professor Nan Li. The research innovatively quantifies the disturbance caused by extreme weather events on urban population mobility at an individual level, based on the mobility data of about 60 thousand residents in Guangzhou city in the two months before and after Typhoon Hato and Typhoon Pakhar. The study also analyzes the similarities and differences of the disturbance among different population types, and clarifies the relationship between the heterogeneous characteristics of human population and different behavioral responses under extreme weather events. The research shows that extreme weather will negatively affect an individual’s ability to travel, willingness to travel, and travel dynamics, and the form and extent of the impact is tightly related to the individual’s demographic characteristics, travel behavior and surrounding urban environment, and so on.
Figure 2 Xinyuan Zhang
Xinyuan Zhang will join the research group of Associate Professor Nan Li in the fall semester of the coming academic year to study for a doctorate degree in management science and engineering. Her doctoral research will focus on studying the travel behavior of urban population under the influence of extreme weather events.
