Sijie Yang

PhD Researcher in NUS Urban Analytics Lab

SDE4, CDE

8 Architecture Dr

Singapore 117356

I am a PhD student at Urban Analysis Lab, Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore, where my PhD supervisor is Prof. Filip Biljecki. I hold MSc in Space Syntax from University College London and Bachelor of Architecture from Chongqing University. In addition, I am a computer science master’s student at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania.

My research explores the integration of new computational technologies, including Computer Science and GIScience, with the study of the built environment. I aim to advance knowledge in four key areas:

Urban Intelligence Investigating the integrated development of urban intelligence through emerging technologies, including the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI).
Urban Data Utilizing multi-source urban data to analyze and address complex urban challenges, to uncover insights into the interactions between the built environment and urban dynamics.
Urban Comfort Focusing on subjective, human-centered perceptions of comfort in urban spaces, to evaluate and enhance the sensory and experiential dimensions of urban environments.
Architectural Systems Conducting micro-scale investigations into architectural systems, including spatial configurations, building information systems, and sustainable green building solutions.

featured research

Thermal Comfort in Sight

Street Perception on Housing Price

Spatial Configuration of Chinese Gardens

news

Nov 17, 2024	Latest research work was published as a preprint online: Thermal Comfort in Sight
Aug 11, 2023	Enrolled in NUS Urban Analytics Lab as a PhD researcher.
Jul 7, 2023	Formally graduated with Distinction from University College London.
Jun 19, 2023	Master thesis in UCL was published Street Perception and House Prices.
Mar 22, 2023	Offered with full research scholarship by National University of Singapore.
Aug 22, 2022	Published a conference paper about Configurational Comparison between Chinese Garden.

latest posts

Dec 18, 2021	The salient mode and hidden mode of urban environment cognition and development

selected publications

2024

Thermal Comfort in Sight: Thermal Affordance and its Visual Assessment for Sustainable Streetscape Design

Sijie Yang, Adrian Chong, Pengyuan Liu, and 1 more author

arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.11887, 2024

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In response to climate change and urban heat island effects, enhancing human thermal comfort in cities is crucial for sustainable urban development. Traditional methods for investigating the urban thermal environment and corresponding human thermal comfort level are often resource intensive, inefficient, and limited in scope. To address these challenges, we (1) introduce the concept of thermal affordance, which represents the inherent capacity of a streetscape to influence human thermal comfort based on its visual and physical features; and (2) a method to evaluate it (visual assessment of thermal affordance – VATA), which combines street view imagery (SVI), online and in-filed surveys, and statistical learning algorithms. VATA extracts five categories of image features from SVI data and establishes 19 visual-perceptual indicators for streetscape visual assessment. Using a multi-task neural network and elastic net regression, we model their chained relationship to predict and comprehend thermal affordance for Singapore. VATA predictions are validated with field-investigated OTC data, providing a cost-effective and scalable method to assess the thermal comfort potential of urban streetscape. This framework can inform streetscape design to support sustainable, livable, and resilient urban environments.
@article{yang2024thermal, title = {Thermal Comfort in Sight: Thermal Affordance and its Visual Assessment for Sustainable Streetscape Design}, author = {Yang, Sijie and Chong, Adrian and Liu, Pengyuan and Biljecki, Filip}, journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.11887}, year = {2024}, }

2023

The Role of Subjective Perceptions and Objective Measurements of the Urban Environment in Explaining House Prices in Greater London: A Multi-Scale Urban Morphology Analysis

Sijie Yang, Kimon Krenz, Waishan Qiu, and 1 more author

ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 2023

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House prices have long been closely related to the built environment of cities, yet whether the subjective perception (SP) of these environments has a differing effect on prices at multiple urban scales is unclear. This study sheds light on the impact of people’s SP of the urban environment on house prices in a multi-scale urban morphology analysis. We trained a machine learning (ML) model to predict people’s SP of the urban environment around properties across Greater London with survey response data from an online survey evaluating people’s SP of street view image (SVI) and linked this to house price data. This information was used to construct a hedonic price model (HPM) and to evaluate the association between SP and house price data in a series of linear regression models controlling location information and urban morphological characteristics such as street network centralities at multiple urban scales, quantified using space syntax (SS) methods. The findings show that SP influences house prices, but this influence differs depending on the urban scale of analysis. Particularly, a sense of ‘enclosure’ and ‘comfort’ are important factors influencing house price variation. This study contributes by introducing SP of the urban environment as a new dimension into the traditional HPM and by exploring the economic impact of SP on the house price market at multiple urban scales.
@article{yang2023role, title = {The Role of Subjective Perceptions and Objective Measurements of the Urban Environment in Explaining House Prices in Greater London: A Multi-Scale Urban Morphology Analysis}, author = {Yang, Sijie and Krenz, Kimon and Qiu, Waishan and Li, Wenjing}, journal = {ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information}, volume = {12}, number = {6}, pages = {249}, year = {2023}, publisher = {MDPI}, }

2022

Cultural impacts on traditional Chinese garden design: A configurational comparison between traditional Chinese imperial and private gardens using space syntax

Sijie Yang, and Yufeng Yang

In Proceedings of the 13th International Space Syntax Symposium, 2022

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Based on former qualitative studies, traditional Chinese imperial garden (TCIG) and private garden (TCPG) arguably have different cultural backgrounds and spatial properties. However, few studies have analysed configurational differences between TCIG and TCPG quantitatively and linked their different cultural contexts to these differences. This research thus tries to reveal the cultural impacts on the spatial configuration of traditional Chinese gardens by comparing TCIG and TCPG cases quantitatively. The study is processed in two sections: theoretical exploration and comparative case studies. In the first section, we try to link the different cultural backgrounds of TCIG and TCPG with corresponding garden spatial properties and use proper metrics to match these spatial properties. Four dimensions of traditional Chinese garden spatial properties are identified qualitatively based on previous studies: strong and weak programme, wayfinding system, visual relationship and spatial depth. During the process, four corresponding hypotheses about the spatial property differences and predicted results of quantitative studies are proposed. In the second section, four hypotheses may be demonstrated through visibility graph analysis (VGA) in space syntax theory by comparing three samples from each garden type. Our results indicate that TCIG and TCPG differ in all four dimensions, which are further explained by their respective cultural contexts. This research has two main contributions. Firstly, it has demonstrated configurational differences of TCIG and TCPG quantitatively and linked these differences to related cultural backgrounds. Secondly, this study has built a framework to analyse traditional Chinese garden space with space syntax, which can be used in further studies.
@inproceedings{yang2022cultural, title = {Cultural impacts on traditional Chinese garden design: A configurational comparison between traditional Chinese imperial and private gardens using space syntax}, author = {Yang, Sijie and Yang, Yufeng}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 13th International Space Syntax Symposium}, pages = {414}, year = {2022}, organization = {International Space Syntax Symposium}, }