RGC Senior Research Fellow Scheme

Biography

Director of the Research Centre for Urban and Regional Development, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Vice-Chair of the Commission on Population Geography, International Geographical Union
Research interests include migration and urbanization, urban and regional development, Hong Kong
and Pearl River Delta
SRFS project — to analyze various impacts on modelling performance based on a general migration model with many explanatory variables, in addition to population and distance in a simple gravity model, help to reach a better understanding of the migration process
Awards and Honours:
- RGC Senior Research Fellow (2020)
- Regional Studies Association Award for Best International Conference Paper (2016)
- Excellent National Urban and Rural Planning Design Award (2013), Association of Town and Country Planning of China

Project Title

Modelling and Simulating Regional Migration Systems

Award Citation

Prof. Jianfa Shen is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Resource Management and Director of the Research Centre for Urban and Regional Development in The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the Vice-Chair of the Commission on Population Geography of International Geographical Union and Deputy Director of the Specialty Committee on Population Geography, Geographical Association of China.

His research interests include migration and urbanization, urban and regional development, Hong Kong and Peral River Delta. He has undertaken substantial research in these areas funded by GRF grants of RGC and other sources, contributing to theoretical and methodological advancements and empirical analyses and applications such as the development of dual-track urbanization framework and the causes of changing migration patterns in China. He has published some important works in major international journals such as The Professional Geographer, Urban Studies and Regional Studies. His recent book “Urbanization, Regional Development and Governance in China” was published by Routledge in 2018. According to a paper published in Urban Studies journal in 2017, he was one of the top 50 most productive authors in urban studies in the world in the period 1990-2010. He received Research Excellence Award from CUHK twice in 2007-08 and 2013-14.

His project will analyze the sources of modelling error in migration models using an innovative simulation approach. Modelling errors can be caused by missing one significant explanatory variable, wrong assumption of random process and the random process. But they are mixed up and aggregated into one overall measure of goodness-of-fit in previous migration modelling. The project will tackle this challenge and will identify each of the above errors using an innovative approach. The project will advance our knowledge of migration modelling to analyze migration flows more accurately.