Population projections are central to socioeconomic and environmental assessments, including the climate change reports and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Across disciplines, experts rely on demographic data to benchmark trends over time, compare population groups and geographies, and evaluate the impacts of policies and programs. The Community Demographic Model (CDM) integrates advanced demographic methods with computational technologies and modeling frameworks to process diverse datasets and generate high-quality projections of demographic mega trends. These outputs provide critical evidence for assessing global and regional development challenges. A key example is the CDM urbanization projections for climate change scenarios (SSPs), based on the UN new urban definition – Degree of Urbanization (DOU). To ensure international comparability, the suitability of the new urban definitions and methods is also examined in the national and local contexts of China.

About the speaker:

Leiwen Jiang is Professor and Founding Director of Asian Demographic Research Institute (ADRI) at Shanghai University. He adopts multidiscipline methods and conduct comparative analysis in order to improve demographic modelling for global and regional development assessment. His recent projects explore environmental implications of socioeconomic and demographic dynamics, study socioecological effects of international migration under the Belt-and-Road Initiative, and examine the impacts of urbanization trends for meeting climate change challenges and achieving global development goals. He taught at Brown University and Peking University. He also serves as a senior associate at the Population Council, was ever a scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and chief demographer at the Population Action International (PAI). He serves on the boards of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA), and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Vienna Institute of Demography (VID). He was also lead author of IPCC Fifth Assessment Report and a member of IUSSP Scientific Panel on Climate Change, chaired the Scholarship Program of IPCC WGIII Technical Committee.

Departmental Seminar: Demographic Modeling for Global and National Development Assessments

Date: 15 September, 2025

Time: 4:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue: CJT-9.29

Speaker: Prof. Leiwen Jiang

Registration: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?ueid=102726