Geospatial Data Science

Geospatial Data Science integrates geography, data science, and computer science to advance understanding of natural environments, human–nature interactions, and the Earth’s climate system. Our globally recognised team generates, processes, maps, analyses, and shares wall-to-wall global satellite products and socioeconomic datasets. Using physical modelling, advanced machine/deep learning, digital twins, and cloud services, we address pressing challenges in environmental change, agriculture, human health, and smart cities.

Research Strategic Areas

• Remote Sensing

• GIS

• Geospatial Big Data and Artificial Intelligence

Key Research Questions

• How can multi-source satellite data be fused with AI to produce seamless, 40+ year global land-surface products?

• What deep-learning architectures best retrieve biophysical variables globally at 30m resolution?

• How can GeoAI and digital twins enable real-time smart-city monitoring for energy, mobility, and environmental management?

• What are the systematic biases in satellite monitoring of vegetation carbon fluxes?

Relevant Faculty Members & their Areas of Expertise

Professor Yanjia CAO	Health geography Spatial data science Health disparities Spatial epidemiology Space-time data mining Data visualization
Professor Bo HUANG	Spatiotemporal data analytics Satellite image fusion Environmental monitoring Integrated spatial planning
Professor Shunlin LIANG	Remote sensing physical modeling and inversion Global satellite product generation Earth’s Energy Budget Global and regional environmental changes
Professor Han MA	Land-atmosphere parameters retrieval from multiple satellite observations Land and atmospheric radiative transfer modeling Data assimilation and machine learning methodology Global high-resolution seamless satellite biophyscial products development
Professor Hongsheng ZHANG	Smart Cities and Sustainable Development Remote Sensing of Urban Environment Remote Sensing of Wetlands Multi-sensor Data Fusion
Professor Yuyu ZHOU	Urbanization mapping and modeling Urban heat island Urban energy use and emissions Urban phenology Urban air pollution Urban sustainability Water-energy-food nexus Climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability
Professor Peng ZHU	Agroecosystem modeling Climate change impacts and adaptation Environmental remote sensing Food-water-carbon nexus

Key Outputs

• GLASS & Hi-GLASS Products Suite (glass.hku.hk)

• Urban Vegetation “Warming Paradox” (Nature/HKU Press)

• iEarth Framework (National Science Review)

Interdisciplinary Initiatives

• C. P. Lo LAB of GIS

• JC STEM Lab of Quantitative Remote Sensing

• Geography HPC System (GEOG-HPC)

• Asian Resilience for Climate & Environment Joint Laboratory (ARC-Asia Joint Lab)

• China Sustainability Intelligence Observatory (CSIO)

• Global Land Surface Satellite (GLASS) Products

• Master of Science in Geospatial Data Science (MSc(GeoDS)

• Sustainable Cities Lab (SCL)

• Urban Sustem Institute (HKU-USI)

Research Goals

Upcoming.