About
Dr Alan Wong is an experienced Research Fellow with significant industry and investigative experience at the University of Southampton.
"I work with the University, City and Hampshire Councils, and the local community to make Southampton a more people-friendly, accessible, and liveable City, with the aim of helping to improve people’s physical and mental health, and making it easier to connect people and places."
Research
Research interests
- Development of people-friendly, sustainable and liveable cities, that inter-link urban with transportation planning.
- Improving the de-carbonisation of road transport, with the associated benefits for air quality and public health.
- Encouraging more sustainable modes of travel, including walking, cycling and taking public transport, with the health benefits these can also bring.
- Improving the connectivity and public space-making for both children and adults/older people.
- Delivery of technology-enabled, value-added information systems and services for transportation and urban planning.
Current research
Alan is currently working with the Healthy Low-carbon Transport Hub (HLTHub) on the development of an evaluation framework and supporting case studies for maximising the travel and health co-benefits of low-carbon transport. The Hub is a multi-disciplinary research partnership involving four major universities across the UK, including the Universities of Birmingham, University College London, Leeds, and Southampton; and a wider network of local authorities and commercial partners, including Portsmouth and Southampton City Councils, and the Go South Coast group of bus companies.
Research projects
Completed projects
Publications
Biography
Alan is passionate about creating impact through research and engaging the community and local authorities to develop vibrant and liveable cities that are centred around people and innovation, rather than largely planned around buildings and cars, and the harmful effects air pollution can bring.
He holds a first degree from Imperial College London, and a Doctorate from the University of Southampton, as well as business and technology qualifications. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (now Advance HE) and the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), and has won awards for Science Communications and in Research Presentation.
His public engagement work includes organising as well as presenting at many festivals and exhibitions, including the Cheltenham Science Festival, Winchester Science Centre, the Glastonbury music festival (as an invited artist), and the Royal Society’s Summer Exhibition. He champions an art-and-science cultural connections network in Southampton and coordinates the Future Cities Community Hub (as creator) and a Principal Associate of the University’s Public Engagement with Research unit (PERu).
Before his work on sustainable cities, Alan worked as a senior technologist for several major FTSE100/global companies and the UK Government. This includes collaborating with Transport for London (TfL) on developing innovative uses of data from their iBus (Automatic Vehicle Location and ‘Countdown’) System to improve London-wide bus fleet detection, giving vehicles priority at signal junctions and reducing bus stop dwell times. He has also worked with local bus companies in the region on reducing vehicle emissions, and with MIT and Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) on assessing the impact of in-vehicle systems tasks on drivers’ workload and the coping strategies they adopt as a consequence.