01 Dec 2025
At the 30th International Symposium on Advancement of Construction Management and Real Estate (CRIOCM2025), the final-year thesis “Integrating Questionnaire Survey and Social Media Analysis to Investigate Urban Transportation Satisfaction: A Case Study of Suzhou”, authored by Qiuyu Yan, an undergraduate student from the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Design School at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, was successfully accepted and awarded the Merit Paper Award.
His research not only offers a new methodological approach to analysing urban transportation satisfaction but also provides valuable policy insights for Suzhou to develop data-driven transportation governance and enhance sustainable urban mobility.
Group photo of XJTLU award winners at the conference
During the research process, Qiuyu Yan was responsible for the design, dissemination, data collection and analysis of the questionnaire, and conducted data scraping and sentiment analysis of public discussions on Suzhou’s transportation across social media platforms. He then integrated, compared, and visualised the two categories of research data.
This was also Qiuyu Yan’s first experience participating in an international academic conference, which he described as a transformative academic journey.
“The conference offered me a broader, more diverse, and more global academic perspective. Being part of such a wide academic community helped me grow and envision more possibilities for my future research endeavor,” he said.
As his academic supervisor, Dr Yitian Ren provided full guidance throughout the research process, from topic selection and methodological development to research data collection, refining the research output and presentation preparation.
“Qiuyu demonstrated strong research resilience and potential by quickly transforming feedback into actionable results, successfully realizing research concepts into data collection and analysis,” Dr Ren commented.
Group photo of XJTLU Design School participants: from left to right – Yuting Du, Professor Marc Aurel Schnabel, Qiuyu Yan, Dr Yitian Ren
In addition to the paper presentation, Professor Marc Aurel Schnabel, Dean of the Design School at XJTLU, delivered a keynote speech titled “Designing Resilient Futures: Human-Centred Innovation in Construction and Real Estate”.
Dr Yitian Ren also chaired the parallel forum on “Regional Planning and Design”, where she contributed valuable insights to the academic discussions.
Professor Marc Aurel Schnabel delivering the keynote speech
Dr Yitian Ren chairing the “Regional Planning and Design” parallel forum
In addition, Professor Schnabel and Professor Haijun Bao, Dean of the School of Spatial Planning and Design at Hangzhou City University, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two institutions. The MoU aims to deepen collaboration in research, academic exchanges, and resource sharing, contributing to sustainable urban and rural development.
Signing of the Memorandum of Understanding
Gift exchange between XJTLU and Hangzhou City University - from left to right: Dr Yitian Ren, Professor Marc Aurel Schnabel, Professor Haijun Bao, and Professor Liyin Shen
Story and photos provided by Department of Urban Planning and Design
Edited and translated by Yi Qian
01 Dec 2025