Choh-Ming Li Professor of Geography and Resource Management; Director, Institute of Space and Earth Information Science; Director, Institute of Future Cities; Head, Chung Chi College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Professor Kwan Mei Po is Director of the Institute of Space and Earth Information Science, Director of Institute of Future Cities, Head of Chung Chi College Choh-Ming Li Professor of Geography and Resource Management, and an affiliated faculty of the JC School of Public Health and Primary Care of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Professor Kwan is a Fellow of the United Kingdom Academy of Social Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Royal Geographical Society and the American Association of Geographers, and a Guggenheim Fellow.
She was awarded many Outstanding Academic Achievement Awards by the American Association of Geographers, including the Distinguished Scholarship Honors, the Anderson Medal of Honors in Applied Geography, the Wilbanks Prize for Transformational Research in Geography, and the Stanley Brunn Award for Creativity in Geography. She has just been awarded the 2023 Outstanding Achievement Award in Modeling Geographical Systems by the International Geographical Union (IGU).
Professor Kwan has delivered about 380 keynote addresses and invited lectures and presentations in more than 20 countries.
Her recent projects examine the health impacts of individual environmental exposure (e.g., noise, air pollution, green space), urban and mobility issues, AI for sustainability education, and ethical issues for geospatial data and the protection of geoprivacy via the development of a Geospatial Virtual Data Enclave (GVDE).
The rapid development and widespread use of advanced geospatial technologies such as GPS, remote sensing, mobile sensing, and location-aware devices in recent years have greatly facilitated the acquisition of enormous amounts of high-resolution space-time data. Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods have rapidly been developed to utilize these data for sustainability research. To build smart and healthy cities, we need to integrate these multi-source geospatial big data acquired by earth observation technologies and AI to provide more accurate assessments of individual exposures to environmental or social risk factors, and to develop planning policies to improve health for all. Drawing upon her recent projects on individual exposures to green/blue spaces, light-at-night, and air and noise pollution, she explores how AI is used for the analysis of high-resolution space-time data and provide new insights into building smart and sustainable cities. Implications for education and curriculum development will also be discussed.