Abstract for: The Analysis and Simulation of the Materials Inflow and Outflow of Macao

The metabolism of a city can be seen as the process of transforming all the materials and commodities for sustaining the city’s economic activity. The Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) is a highly developed metropolitan region where prosperous tourism has made it possible to support a population of 0.54 million people on an area about 29.2 km2. This paper highlights the economic and environmental transformation of Macao by emphasizing the following aspects: the population trends, tourists changing trends, GDP, foreign investment trends, material resource consumption and waste generation, so as to forecast the trend of the Macao development and provide valuable reference to government policy makers. The result shows with the development of Macao, its area would increase, and population density would remain the same level, while its GDP and foreign investment might increase to the year of 2017.The imported materials would fluctuate with the equivalent population. The mineral and the potable water increased, while sewage would be influenced by the uncertain precipitation. This research was financially supported by the Science and Technology Development Fund of Macau (No.022/2007/A2), Macao SAR, China.