Dissertation Defense: Applications of Urban Informatics in Sustainability Planning for Food Waste Management
March 28, 2022
1:00 PM - 5:00 PM
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Download iCal FileThe Urban Planning and Policy Department would like to announce the dissertation defense of Ph.D. candidate, Junjun Zheng. All are welcome to attend via Zoom (registration required).
Dissertation Title: Applications of Urban Informatics in Sustainability Planning for Food Waste Management
Abstract:
Growing concerns over urban environmental challenges have highlighted the need for sustainability planning. Yet, a lack of sustainability metrics for cities, mainly due to data constraints and inadequate awareness, hinders rational, communicative, and inclusive sustainability planning processes. Urban informatics (UI) is identified as a promising solution to these problems. This dissertation research aims to answer the central question: how could urban informatics advance data-driven and evidence-based processes for effective, equitable sustainability planning?
By focusing on sustainable food waste management (FWM), this study develops the first household-level food waste inventory database and applies it to conduct regional environmental impact assessments and identify influential factors in residential food waste generation. The findings further contribute to a novel analytical framework that evaluates the sustainability of urban food recovery programs. The numerical analyses provide planning insights for FWM policymaking and communicate trade-offs in planning objectives, which demonstrate that UI can converge knowledge into urban research, enrich data for sustainability planning, improve analytics for effective communications, and inform collective decisions.
In summary, through interdisciplinary approaches, this study demonstrates that UI enables system-thinking to balance social, economic, and environmental objectives in sustainability planning. Moreover, planning education should equip future planners to understand, implement, and advance UI applications as well as embrace cross-disciplinary learning and collaboration in dealing with urban sustainability challenges.
Date posted
Mar 23, 2022
Date updated
Mar 23, 2022