Research.

Drawing on nearly 700 million geotagged Weibo posts from 2016 to 2022, we identified 459,694 disability-related posts using a Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT)-based model. City-level indicators were constructed to capture three interrelated dimensions of public awareness: attention, attitudes, and discourse. The results reveal substantial spatial and temporal heterogeneity in disability-inclusive awareness across Chinese cities. Contrary to conventional expectations, public attention and positive attitudes toward disability do not increase with city size. Instead, many smaller cities in central and western China exhibit higher attention levels and more positive attitudes, whereas several large eastern megacities show comparatively lower engagement. Nationally, disability-related discussions expanded over time in both intensity and thematic breadth, increasingly encompassing diverse disability types, social inclusion, and (in)accessible environments. However, local urban discourse became more concentrated around volunteering and service-oriented themes, accompanied by declining topic diversity across cities. By providing the first large-scale, city-level assessment of public disability-inclusive awareness in China, this study demonstrates the value of geosocial media data for capturing the socio-spatial dynamics of disability-related perceptions and contributes new empirical evidence to support more inclusive urban research and governance.

Conducted at: Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Publications: Computers, Environment and Urban Systems (2027)

Established in 2013, GOGOVAN is the first app-based platform for delivering goods in Asia, which is dedicated in offering excellent delivery service through innovative technology. Since then, GOGOVAN has extended its service to various platforms. The company connects individuals and businesses directly to thousands of drivers for their real-time delivery needs, and redefines the everyday delivery experience by providing a convenient and efficient service. Over the years, GOGOVAN has expanded its business from Hong Kong to Singapore, South Korea, Mainland China, Taiwan and India and will continue to expand globally. In August 2017, GOGOVAN merged with 58 Suyun, the leader in Mainland China’s intra-city logistics market, and increased GOGOVAN’s presence to over 300 cities, with more than 8 million registered drivers under its network.

Conducted at: Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Publications: International Journal of Geographical Information Science (2020)

In this project, we focus on the five phases of the WiFi big data in Macau, i.e., data storage, data mining, data analysis, strategies and visualization. We utilize WiFi big data to: 1) categorize resident, commuter and tourist into groups, and then model spatiotemporal trajectories of tourists for semantic mining; 2) identify characteristics and preferences of different individuals and groups; 3) understand the experience of tourists in real-world tourism activities, and Virtual space experience through WiFi connection; 4) Develop personalized travel recommendation service and management system based on Internet geographic information. We finally make a geodatabase to support Web GIS and data mining, a Web GIS-based platform for visualization and analytics and data mining algorithms to provide a customizable solution.

Conducted at: Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Publications: Coming soon

This project aims to develop a versatile, user-friendly, highly integrated data and analytical Geomantic Information System (GIS) software platform for disaster monitoring, analysis and prediction. To achieve the objective above, the project team will leverage on the combined expertise from Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) in GIS, spatial data analysis algorithm and modeling together with the advanced natural resource monitoring technology from Insight Robotics comprising robotics control and UAV system in aerial survey. The desired outcome is a platform to improve decision making through disaster monitoring using multi-directional visualization system incorporating various data overlay to enable visualization in a multi-factored reality; & disaster prediction based on trends generated from data mining and fusion combined with spatial data analysis/modeling algorithms.

Conducted at: Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Publications: Journal (Coming soon)

Based on the concepts of isovists and medial axes, we developed a set of algorithms that can automatically generate axial lines for representing individual linearly stretched parts of open space of an urban environment. Open space is the space between buildings, where people can freely move around. The generation of the axial lines has been a key aspect of space syntax research, conventionally relying on hand-drawn axial lines of an urban environment, often called axial map, for urban morphological analysis. Although various attempts have been made towards an automatic solution, few of them can produce the axial map that consists of the least number of longest visibility lines, and none of them really works for different urban environments. Our algorithms provide a better solution than existing ones. Throughout this paper, we have also argued and demonstrated that the axial lines constitute a true skeleton, superior to medial axes, in capturing what we perceive about the urban environment.
Download AxialGen 1.0 client edition (contact xinao.liu@polyu.edu.hk for user name and password, due to copyright concerned) For a quick starter, follow the video clips (best view in a full-screen mode).

Conducted at: Royal Institute of Technology KTH

Publications: International Journal of Geographical Information Science (2010)