HKIAS News

Renowned engineering scientist Professor Yannis A. Phillis, presented a distinguished lecture titled “A Mathematical Model of National Sustainability: Where the World is Heading” for the HKIAS.

Professor Yannis A. Phillis, a renowned engineering scientist, presented a distinguished lecture titled “A Mathematical Model of National Sustainability: Where the World is Heading” for the Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study (HKIAS) at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) on 29 March 2019.

At the lecture, Professor Yannis A. Phillis, a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science, discussed a mathematical model that defines and measures national sustainability, called SAFE: Sustainability Assessment by Fuzzy Evaluation, he also reviewed the use of SAFE model for assessment of sustainability.

Professor Phillis analyzed the imputation procedure and elaborated the computation steps of data processing of SAFE model. Professor Phillis explained that the use of fuzzy logic in SAFE model is able to deal with data that is not well defined and ambiguous information, it becomes the most helpful tool for selecting indicators for assessing sustainability.

In the end, Professor Phillis listed out the assessment results by country rankings, assessments, and the most prominent indicators of improving sustainability. He shared an interesting finding that the progress towards sustainability worldwide in the last 25 years is rather modest and North America regressed slightly over the same period.

Professor Phillis concluded that SAFE model is a global model of sustainability as it is easily modified to incorporate new knowledge and data, and aids decision making with its sensitivity analysis module. This is useful for policy makers to decide on the measures to be taken for sustainable development in the years to come for a sustainable future for life on earth.

Professor Phillis’s research interests are in stochastic control, manufacturing, sustainability and climate change. He is the Professor Emeritus and former Rector at the Technical University of Crete, Greece. He is a member of European Academy of Sciences and European Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Professors who attended the lecture: (left 3) Professor Hong YAN, moderator of this lecture and the Acting Dean of the College of Engineering and Chair Professor of the Department of Electronic Engineering at CityU; (left 4) Professor Yannis A. Phillis and (right 2) Professor Jacob Huang, Executive Director of HKIAS and Chair Professor of Department of Materials Science and Engineering at CityU.

[ Back ]