Angel Hsu
Social Sciences (Environmental Studies)
Assistant Professor
Email: angel.hsu@yale-nus.edu.sg
Email: angel.hsu@yale.edu
Website: www.datadrivenlab.org
An Assistant Professor of Social Sciences (Environmental Studies) at Yale-NUS College, Angel Hsu is Founder and Director of the Data-Driven Environmental Policy Lab (Data-Driven Lab), a multidisciplinary research team of policy researchers, data scientists, programmers, and visual communicators. Her research explores the intersection of science and policy and the use of data-driven approaches to understand environmental sustainability, particularly in the areas of climate change and energy, urbanisation and air quality. Her research projects apply large-scale datasets derived from satellite remote sensing and other spatially-explicit sources to evaluate environmental policy performance.
Focusing particularly on China and the Global South, Asst Prof Hsu has provided expert testimony to the US-China Economic Security and Review Commission and is a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations and a Public Intellectual Program Fellow. In addition to publishing in academic journals, Asst Prof Hsu has been committed to public outreach and was a TED 2018 Age of Amazement Speaker and recognised as an inaugural Grist 50 leader. She previously held a joint appointment as Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Yale-NUS College in Singapore and the Yale School of the Environment as an adjunct. She holds a PhD in Environmental Policy from Yale University, an MPhil in Environmental Policy from the University of Cambridge, and a BS in Biology and BA in Political Science from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC.
Data-driven approaches and applied data science to environmental policy evaluation, with a focus on China and the Global South
Climate change governance of non-state and subnational actors
Urbanisation and climate change
Big data and data innovation in the context of sustainable development
(Selected peer-reviewed publications)
Thomas, R., Hsu, A., and Weinfurter, A. Sustainable and Inclusive – Evaluating urban sustainability indicators’ suitability for measuring progress towards SDG-11. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science.
Hale, T., S. Chan, A. Hsu, A. Clapper, C. Elliot, P. Faria, T. Kuramochi, S. McDaniel, M. Morgado, M. Roelfsema, M. Santaella, N. Singh, I. Tout, C. Weber, A. Weinfurter, O. Wideberg. Assessing the progress, implementation, and impact of subnational and non-state climate action. Climate Change Policy.
Lui, S., Kuramochi, T., Smit, S., Roelfsema, M., A. Hsu, Weinfurter, A., Chan, S., Hale, T., Fekete, H., Lütkehermöller, K., Maria Jose de Villafranca Casas , Leonardo Nascimento , Sebastian Sterl & Niklas Höhne (2020): Correcting course: the emission reduction potential of international cooperative initiatives, Climate Policy, DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2020.1806021
Hsu, A. Tan, J., Ng, Y.M., Vanda, R. and N. Goyal. (2020). Performance determinants show European cities are delivering on climate mitigation. Nature Climate Change.
Hsu, A., Khoo, W., Goyal, N., and M. Wainstein. (2020). Next-generation Digital Ecosystem for Climate Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery: A Review of Digital Data Collection Technologies, in Special Issue: Innovations and Perspectives in Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery. Frontiers in Big Data.
Chakraborty, T.C., Hsu., A., D. Manya and G. Sheriff. (2020). A Spatially Explicit Satellite-Derived Surface Urban Heat Island Database for the United States: Characterization, Uncertainties, and Possible Applications. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.
Hsu, A., Yeo, Z.Y., Rauber, R., Sun, J., Kim, Y., Raghavan, S., Chin, N., Namdeo, V., and Weinfurter, A. (2020). ClimActor, a harmonized dataset of 10,000+ city and region transnational climate network participation. Nature Scientific Data.
Takeshi Kuramochi, Mark Roelfsema, Angel Hsu, Swithin Lui, Amy Weinfurter, Sander Chan, Thomas Hale, Andrew Clapper, Andres Chang & Niklas Höhne (2020): Beyond national climate action: the impact of region, city, and business commitments on global greenhouse gas emissions, Climate Policy, DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2020.1740150.
Hsu, A., Z.Y. Yeo, and A. Weinfurter. Emerging Digital Environmental Governance in China: The Case of Black and Smelly Waters in China, in “Data, Digitization and Environmental Governance in China” edited by G. Kotska, X. Zhang. (2019). Journal of Environmental Management and Planning, DOI: 10.1080/09640568.2019.1661228.
Fritz, S., L. See, T. Carlson, M. Haklay, J.L. Oliver, D.Fraisl, R. Mondarini, M. Brocklehurst, L. Shanley, S. Schade, U. When, T. Abrate, J. Anstee, S. Arnold, M. Billot, J. Campbell, J. Espey, M. Gold, G. Hager, S. He, L. Hepburn, A. Hsu, D. Long, J. Maso, I. McCallum, M. Muniafu, I. Moorthy, M. Obersteiner, A. Parker, M. Weissplug, and S. West. Citizen Science and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. (2019). Nature Sustainability. DOI: 10.1038/s41893-019-0390-3.
Hsu, A. J. Brandt, O. Widerberg, S. Chan & A. Weinfurter. (2019). Assessing Linkages Between Non-State Actors and Nationally-Determined Contributions in special issue ‘Making climate action more transparent and ambitious: lessons learned from the first Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs),’ Climate Policy, DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2019.1624252.
Chakraborty, T., A. Hsu, D. Manya, and G. Sherriff. (2019).Disproportionately Higher Exposure to Urban Heat in Lower-income Neighborhoods: a Multi-City Perspective in “Urban Sustainability Solutions” special issue of Environmental Research Letters, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab3b99.
Hsu, A., Höhne, N., Kuramochi, T., Roelfsema, M..Weinfurter, A., Xie, Y., Lütkehermöller, K., Chan, S., Corfee-Morlot, J., Drost, P., Faria, P., Gardiner, A., Gordon, D.J., Hale, T., Hultman, N.E., Moorhead, J., Reuvers, S., Setzer, J., Singh, S., Weber, C., Widerberg, O. (2019). A Research Roadmap for Quantifying Non-State and Subnational Climate Action. Nature Climate Change, 9: 1–17.
Hsu, A., A. Weinfurter, J. Tong and Y. Xie. Black and Smelly Waters: How Citizen-Generated Transparency Addressing Gaps in China’s Environmental Management, in “Disclosing Sustainability: The Transformative Power of Transparency?” A. Gupta, I. Boas, and P. Oosterveer, Eds. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning. (2019). Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, DOI: 10.1080/1523908X.2019.1654365.
Berrang-Ford, L., Biesbroek, R., Ford, J.D., Lesnikowski, A., Tanabe, A., Wang, F., Chen, C., Hsu, A., Hellmann, J., Pringle, P., Grecequet, M., Amado, J.C., Huq, S., Lwasa, S., Heymann, S.J. Tracking global climate change adaptation among governments. Nature Climate Change, 9(6), 440.
Hsu, A., Weinfurter, A.J. & Xu, K. Aligning Sub-national Climate Actions for the Post-Paris Regime. Climatic Change (2017). doi:10.1007/s10584-017-1957-5.
Hsu, A., Y. Cheng, A. Weinfurter, K. Xu, and C. Yick. (2016). Track climate pledges of cities and companies. Nature 532: 303-305.
Hsu, A., A.S. Moffat, A.J. Weinfurter, and J.D. Schwartz. “Towards a New Climate Diplomacy.” Nature Climate Change 5, 501–503 (2015).
Chan, S., van Asselt, H., Hale, T., Abbott, K., Beisheim, M., Hoffmann, M., Guy, B., Höhne, Hsu, A., Pattberg, P., Pauw, P., Ramstein, C., and Widerberg, O. (2015). Reinvigorating international climate policy: A comprehensive framework for effective nonstate action. Global Policy, 6(4), 466-473. Recognized as one of Global Policy’s Top-10 cited papers.
Hsu, A. (2015). Measuring Policy Analytical Capacity for the Environment: A Case for Engaging New Actors. Policy and Society. http://doi:10.1016/j.polsoc.2015.09.003
Malik, O., A. Hsu, L. Johnson, and A. de Sherbinin. (2015) An Indicator of Global Wastewater Treatment to Inform the Sustainable Development Goals. Environmental Science and Policy, 48: 172-185.
Hsu, A. (2013). Limitations and Challenges of Provincial Environmental Protection Bureaus in China’s Environmental Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification. Environmental Practice, 15(3): 280-292.
Hsu, A., A. de Sherbinin, and H. Shi. (2012). Seeking truth from facts: the challenge of environmental indicator development in China. Environmental Development. 3: 39-51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2012.05.001.
Hsu, A., A. Lloyd, and J.W. Emerson. (2013). What progress have we made since Rio? The 2012 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) and Pilot Trend EPI. Environmental Science and Policy, vol 33:171–185. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2013.05.011.
Hsu, A. A. Reuben, D. Shindell, A. de Sherbinin, and M. Levy. (2013). Toward the Next Generation of Air Quality Monitoring. Atmospheric Environment, 80:561-570. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231013005578.
Quantitative Reasoning (2019, 2020)
Comparative Social Inquiry (2015, 2016)
Environmental Studies Capstone Course (2019-2020)
Data Science for the Environment (2020)
China’s Energy and Environmental Sustainability Challenge (2016, 2017, 2019)
Climate Science and Policy (2017, 2019)
Urbanisation and the Environment (2016, 2017)