Biography

Hello!

My name is Haiyan Hao (郝海燕), an Assistant Professor in the Division of Computational Social Science (CSS) and affliated to the Division of Development & Governance at the School of Humanities and Social Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-Shenzhen). Before joining CUHK-Shenzhen, I earned my Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Florida. You can learn more about my academic background and activities on my official website.

My research focuses on leveraging advanced analytics and computational approaches to empower human communities in addressing a wide range of social and environmental challenges—such as technological disruptions and extreme events—with the goal of contributing to smart and resilient urban development. My past work has incorporated a variety of techniques, including:

• Geo-simulation (e.g., cellular automata, agent-based modeling)
• Multi-modal social media data mining
• GeoAI (e.g., graph-based deep learning GCN & GAT, spatio-temporal deep learning, interpretable/explainable AI)
• Real-time computing frameworks (e.g., Apache Spark, Kafka, Flink)
• Conventional statistical approaches, machine learning models, Bayesian Network model, network analysis, etc.

My research was supported by multiple institutions and foundations including National Science Foundation (NSF), Natural Hazard Center (NHC), World Resource Institute (WRI), and National Science Foundation of China (NSFC). To learn more about my research, please explore my Google Scholar and ResearchGate profile.

Research Directions:

My research focused on the following three directions as the following figure shown：

• Automated extraction of crisis information from social sensing data (data generated by the general public)；
• Applying advanced analytical and computational methods to understand urban dynamics under complex scenarios; and
• Evaluating urban planning and management strategies through scenario simulation.