This site presents projects across a multitude of topics and locations, generally fielded in the design disciplines. I believe most complex problems can be advanced and mediated through design, using a wide recognition of urban processes, economy, ecologies and social observations.
Biography My work focuses on the advanced modeling and representation of ecological phenomena, geospatial and heavy data, with applied research covering environmental risk and policy, equity, aesthetics and the distribution of physical resources. I offer studio and lecture courses on regional landscape planning, landscape media, and GIS and research-based seminars on environmental conservation, modernization and rural development in China, Southeast Asia and Latin America. My current research targets three areas: 1) Tracing the ecological effects of Sino-Peru investment with Harvard's South America Project; 2) Advocating for multi-scale landscape planning in industry and infrastructure in southern Myanmar; and 3) Modelling abstract topological structures for the manipulation of complex spatial and environmental data.
Kelly, A.S., Connette, G., Helsingen, H., and Paing Soe. (2016). Wildlife Crossing: Locating species' movement corridors in Tanintharyi. Worldwide Fund for Nature (Myanmar). 49pp.
Land Development and Conservation in Hong Kong - Roundtable and Workshop convened a panel of academics and NGOs to debate land supply over an interactive mapping platform that composites and visualizes key land data across scales.
Modelling Infrastructure Scenarios in Data-Poor Regions: Land change, mitigation strategies, and 3D-printed landscapes
Ashley Scott Kelly, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong
Dorothy Tang, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong
Hanna Helsingen, Green Economy Team Lead, WWF Myanmar
Nirmal Bhagabati, Senior Scientist, Natural Capital, WWF US
A series of 3D-printed surface models detail design solutions for mitigating impacts of new road infrastructure on wildlife habitat and ecosystem services in southern Myanmar. More methodology than pure technology, these models facilitate dialogue on possible futures and exhibit the increasing levels of detail and narrative achievable with innovative approaches to site design in places that otherwise lack specific data and resolution.
Exhibited at World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Fuller Symposium 2015: Wired in the Wild: Can technology save the planet?, National Geographic, Washington DC.
Land Development and Conservation in Hong Kong - Roundtable and Workshop
Development debates surrounding conversion of Hong Kong's conservation areas are understandably polarized. These conversations will remain superficial and without traction unless a strategy can be developed for systematically analysing the Development Bureau's "multi-pronged" approaches. While action to improve country park continuity has waned since clear advances two years ago, zoning amendments for some 150 proposed housing locations, almost half within Green Belts, are ongoing to fulfill the Bureau's short-term development goals. Medium- and long-term strategies, including development of country parks and reclamation studies, parallel these efforts. Planners, academics, and citizens must be both supportive and critical of piecemeal and negotiated approaches to development, especially where conservation land uses are at stake. The need for territory-wide dialogue is imminent.
The Development and Conservation Awareness Map (DCAM) is being piloted in Myanmar's Tanintharyi Region with civil society groups and international NGOs. The objective is to coordinate often contradictory knowledge of development projects, at any stage of planning and operation, impacting the region and to facilitate dialogue. This is paramount given the current climate of domestic and international investment in Tanintharyi, the complex state of dual-administration, the simultaneous presence of several international NGOs, the persistence of displaced persons and ethnic conflict, the drafting of new land use plans, forest laws, and impact requirements, and not least the region's critical ecological value. As new plans for projects are discovered or as existing projects change course, they can be added to the map via simple drawing tools, uploading, and commentary by the platform's diverse user groups.
WWF-Myanmar, scientists from Stanford's Natural Capital Project, and Ashley Scott Kelly recently took government officials along the Dawei-Myitta road to explain land use change, erosion control, slope stabilization, and other principles of sustainable transport infrastructure and development. Participants included members from nine departments, including the Ministries of Environmental Conservation and Forestry (MOECAF), Agriculture, and Construction.
