The Jockey Club Smart City Tree Management Project finally came to an end after three successful years of implementation, which resulted in a smart monitoring system of about 8,000 trees all over Hong Kong. In a recent closing ceremony, the system’s technology was officially transferred to the Tree Management Office of the HKSAR Government’s Development Bureau.

To keep up with the times and better reflect the expertise of its academic staff, the Department of Building Services Engineering (BSE) has been renamed. From 1 September 2021 it is called the Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering (BEEE), offering up-to-date programmes related to Building Sciences and Engineering.

Prof. Charles Wong and Prof. John Shi of the Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI) have been honoured with 2021 Smart 50 Awards for their smart city projects. The Smart 50 Awards recognize 50 of the most innovative and influential smart cities’ projects around the world, in partnership with Smart Cities Connect, Smart Cities Connect Foundation and US Ignite.

PolyU has won the largest share of postdoctoral places in the 2021 Hong Kong Scholars Program (HKSP), getting 22 out of the 52 funded places. Seven of these went to academics in the Faculty of Construction and Environment (FCE) for them to engage a mainland scholar as a Postdoctoral Fellow in their research projects.

On 23 August 2021, the Faculty of Construction and Environment (FCE) held its annual forum for some of its leading colleagues to share their successful experiences in writing research proposals for various RGC competitive grants, which have fueled their career development as well as the continued growth of the university.

Prof. John Shi of the Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI) has developed a lightweight 3D mobile mapping backpack for surveyors to collect continuous data like coordinates in various indoor and outdoor urban environments.

On 26 August 2021, the four departments of the Faculty of Construction and Environment each held orientations for their new undergraduate students. Department heads and programme leaders provided students with useful information about their respective departments and study programmes.

On 26 July 2021, the Water Supplies Department (WSD) of the HKSAR Government and the Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI) jointly hosted an opening ceremony of the Q-Leak Training Centre, the first of its kind in the world for training and developing nondestructive R&D/technology transfer solutions of diagnosing underground water pipe leakage.