SAFARI
Systems Analysis For sustainability And climate ResIlience
Starting in 2023, Dr. Zhi CAO has assumed the position of Full Professor at Nankai University, Tianjin, China. Prior to his position at Nankai University, he was a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Applied Engineering, University of Antwerp, Belgium. He embarked on his postdoctoral training at the Center for Life Cycle Engineering at the University of Southern Denmark, Denmark, followed by a stint at the Energy and Resource Systems Analysis Laboratory at Northwestern University, United States. In 2017, he earned his PhD degree from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Cao is broadly interested in sustainability and industrial ecology, with a particular interest in developing and applying state-of-the-art sustainability assessment tools to examine the techno-economic feasibility of implementing low-carbon technologies or policy options. He is a mathematical model enthusiast with years of training in industrial ecology tools and beyond.
Creating a resource cadaster for pavements
Built environment stocks – building and transport infrastructure – provide essential services to fulfill basic human needs, such as workplace, mobility, and communication. Road infrastructure constitutes an integral part of built environment stocks. It connects and shapes human settlements, ensuring daily mobility of people, access to jobs, and distribution of goods. Materials accumulated in road infrastructure over their long-life span could potentially serve as future resource providers, which have been termed as anthropogenic material stocks. This project aims to develop an exchangeable knowledge and data platform to inventory ‘material passports’ of pavements, which will enable resource recycling and circular design in pavement sector moving forward.
