News

LSGI Scholar's Expert Opinion Reveals China's Land Subsidence Study

Prof. DING Xiaoli, Chair Professor of Geomatics in the Department of LSGI at PolyU, has gained international recognition for his expertise on land subsidence issues. In recent interviews with Nature and BBC World Service's "Newshour", Prof. Ding discussed the research in a paper revealing alarming statistics: approximately 16% of the mapped areas in China's major cities are sinking rapidly. Within a century, one in ten residents in coastal cities could be living below sea level. He emphasised that subsidence is not exclusive to China, and excessive groundwater usage could be the primary cause, highlighting the importance of controlling groundwater usage as an effective solution. Online coverage Nature BBC World Service Recording

Research by LSGI Scholar Reveals the Increasing Risk of Concurrent Heatwaves and Extreme Sea Levels Along the Global Coastline

A research study led by Dr. Shuo WANG, an Associate Professor in the Department of LSGI at PolyU, and his team, has discovered that the concurrent occurrence of heatwaves and extreme short-term sea level rises at coastal locations significantly increased between 1998 and 2017 when compared to the preceding 20 years. The study also predicts that, under a modelled high emissions scenario, the probability of the occurrence of such events in 2025–2049 may multiply by fivefold. These research findings provide scientific evidence and guidance for improving climate adaptation strategies in response to extreme weather events, which will aid in the development of climate-resilient coastal cities. The study has been published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. Read the article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01274-1 Congratulations to Dr Wang and his team on this remarkable achievement!   Online coverage: The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Scientific American Nature Asia CCTV Xinhua Net People’s Daily People.com Jiangnan Evening News Jinhua Daily The Paper NetEase Forbes The Straits Times France 24 Eyewitness News Deccan Herald The Telegraph Calcutta, India Malay Mail Daily Excelsior EurekAlert China News Service ifeng.com

LSGI Student, Deanna Xu, Receives the 'For Our Future Scholarship' 2023/24

Congratulations to Deanna Xu Yi Nam, an undergraduate student at LSGI, for receiving the 'For Our Future Scholarship' for the 2023/24 academic year. This prestigious scholarship, awarded by The Greater Bay Area Homeland Youth Community Foundation, aims to recognize and support local university students who demonstrate exceptional academic performance with diverse talents, and a strong dedication to community service. Out of over 250 applicants from 13 local institutions, Deanna was selected as one of the 16 awardees by the Scholarship Selection Committee. She will receive a scholarship of HKD 50,000 and an exchange opportunity to the Greater Bay Area (GBA). This exchange program will focus on innovation and technology, culture and art, economy and the livelihood of people in mainland cities of the GBA. During the award ceremony held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on 17 April 2024, Deanna shared her inspiring journey of pursuing her dreams. Her passion for environmental protection led her to participate in various exchange programs and international energy competitions. Through these experiences, she gained advanced knowledge in geographic information technology and developed a deep understanding of the importance of energy. In the future, Deanna plans to continue her studies in environmental science and utilize geospatial intelligence to help protect the environment. For more information, please click here to access the media coverage. Once again, we congratulate Deanna on her remarkable achievement and wish her success in all her future endeavors!   Online coverage (on 12 Dec 2023): Bastille Post China News Service ifeng.com SZ Online East Money Sina    

LSGI Student, Jenny Chan, Receives the PolyU Outstanding Student Award of Department 2023

Heartfelt Congratulations to Miss Jenny CHAN Chi Yin, our LSGI student, on being selected as the awardee of the ‘Outstanding Student Award 2023’ at the departmental level for her remarkable accomplishments! Jenny was honoured with the award by Prof. TENG Jun Guang, the President of PolyU, at the Presentation Ceremony on 26 March 2024. We are proud of her well-deserved achievements. The Outstanding Student Awards of PolyU aim to recognise full-time final-year students for their excellence in both academic and non-academic pursuits. These awards are presented at the department, faculty and university levels every year. Let us give a resounding round of applause for Jenny! Congratulations! Click here to learn more about the Awardees’ Sharing.  

PolyU Establishes Strategic Partnership with Hexagon for Advancing Spatial Measurement Technologies

We are thrilled to announce that PolyU has established strategic framework partnership with Hexagon, a global leader in digital reality and industrial 4.0 solutions, to join forces in advancing cutting-edge technology and innovation. On 8-9 March, Prof. Wu CHEN, Head of Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI) at PolyU, led the university delegation to visit the Qingdao Hexagon Smart Park and sign a framework MoU with Hexagon Leica Geosystems, marking the official commencement of the collaboration. Mr. Hongquan Li, President (Greater China Region) of Hexagon, Mr. Deyong Wang, Chief Financial Officer (China Region) of Hexagon and Executive Director of Hexagon Leica Geosystems and other distinguished guests witnessed the signing ceremony. The partnership aims to foster R&D in surveying, geographic information mapping technology and equipment, positioning and navigation systems. LSGI will work closely with Hexagon to explore establishing a joint lab focusing on precise positioning, the use of AI and machine learning in surveying and other future tech research topics, plus collaborations on talent cultivation, technology transfer and commercialisation. Apart from the ceremony, multidisciplinary technology forums were held, with experts and scholars from LSGI, Hexagon and the Guangzhou Urban Planning and Design Survey Research Institute engaged in profound and enthusiastic discussions about future innovation trends. Prof. CHEN was impressed by the technology applications of Hexagon in various industries and sought to develop more extensive research and industry cooperation. Mr. Li highlighted Hexagon's unicorn technologies and their high relevance to the technological domains in which PolyU also devoted. By integrating the expertise of Hexagon in sensor, software and autonomous technologies and our research ability, we are looking to generate new disruptive productive forces which are powered by digitalisation, data and technology innovation. LSGI has been working closely with industry partners to develop state-of-art technologies that are beneficial to the society.

LSGI Scholar Receives the AAG Wilbanks Prize for Transformational Research in Geography and RSSG Lifetime Achievement Honor Award 2024

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Qihao WENG, Chair Professor of Geomatics and Artificial Intelligence at LSGI in PolyU, has received the 2024 AAG Wilbanks Prize for Transformational Research in Geography on 6 March 2024. This prestigious award is presented by the American Association of Geographers (AAG), an organisation that brings together over ten thousand members of the global geographic community. The Wilbanks Prize is awarded to geographers who have made important contributions in the fields of Geography or GIScience, or to Science and Society more broadly.   In addition, Prof. Weng has also been honored with the 2024 RSSG Lifetime Achievement Honor Award. This outstanding award is presented by the Remote Sensing Specialty Group (RSSG) of AAG, which focuses on promoting understanding of remote sensing science and encourages collaboration among geographers in applying remote sensing technology in various areas such as research, teaching, public service, and private enterprise. This award recognizes Prof. Weng’s exceptional contributions to the field of remote sensing, demonstrated through a distinguished career of ground-breaking research, dedicated education, and impactful service engagement.   Prof. Weng, a scholar at LSGI, has achieved significant milestones in the field of urban remote sensing, and has transformed urban environmental research with theoretical and technical advances, including novel algorithms and innovative methods for sub-pixel-scale analysis and time series imagery. Moreover, his research has significantly advanced our theoretical understanding and empirical knowledge of urban heat islands, urban sprawl, urbanization effects, and urban environmental sustainability. By establishing connections between satellite thermal infrared imagery, land surface temperature, and air temperature, Prof. Weng’s research connects remotely sensed data to urban spatial patterns, radiation budgets, and climate change. His 2004 methodology for estimating land-surface temperature using satellite-derived vegetation attributes, collaborated with Lu and Schubring, has had far-reaching impacts in various fields, including urban geography, landscape ecology, urban planning, urban meteorology, and climatology.   The AAG will celebrate the 2024 Awards and Honors at a celebration event during the 2024 AAG Annual Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, in April 2024. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to Prof. Weng for his exceptional achievement and awards!

LSGI Alumna Wins the Best Researcher Award 2024 at the “International Research Awards on Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems”

We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Komal Kumari, an alumna of LSGI, has been honoured with the Best Researcher Award 2024 at the “International Research Awards on Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems”. This prestigious award recognises the exceptional research accomplishments and contributions of scientists, innovators, and experimenters in the field of Agriculture. Dr. Komal Kumari completed her PhD degree in 2022 under the supervision of Prof. John Wenzhong SHI, Chair Professor of Geographical Information Science and Remote Sensing at LSGI and the Director of the Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Smart Cities Research Institute of PolyU. Her project focuses on agriculture monitoring for sustainable development using remote sensing. It highlights the utilization of high-resolution Sentinel-2 data, along with a combination of various types of secondary data, in a Random Forest (RF) regression model during different phases of the crop growing season. This approach aims to enhance the accuracy of rice yield prediction and advance our understanding of precision agricultural systems. We extend our congratulations to Dr. Komal Kumari on her remarkable achievement!  

LSGI student wins Team Award for Highest International Potential at the SDG Open Hack@Tsinghua University

We are pleased to announce that Miss XU Yi Nam Deanna, a final-year BSc student of LSGI, won the Team Award for Highest International Potential at the SDG Open Hack@Tsinghua University in 2023. The SDG Open Hack is a competition focused on innovative entrepreneurship, organized by the Tsignhua University Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education Coordination Committee in collaboration with Tsinghua x-lab, iCenter, Center for Global Competence Development, Office of Technology Transfer, and Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School. This competition builds upon the Global Challenge Lab, a 14-day virtual entrepreneurship program held in partnership with Tsinghua University's x-lab in Beijing and the Technical University of Munich. It incorporates the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals and involves various themed hacks. Over 1000 students from 22 top global partner universities are attracted to join, forming teams with diverse academic backgrounds to tackle specific challenges related to UN SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy. Deanna and her team focused on Track 2: RESILIENCE, which involved addressing the challenge of enhancing energy system resilience to extreme weather and other disruptions, resulting in winning the team award for Highest International Potential at the SDG Open Hack. We are excited to see more innovative ideas for sustainable development within the higher education community. Congratulations to Deanna and her teammates!

LSGI Students Receive HKIS Outstanding Dissertation Awards 2023

We are pleased to announce that two of our BSc students from LSGI, Miss SIT Fei Ching and Mr MOK Ka Him, have been awarded with the Outstanding Dissertation Awards 2023 by the Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors for their excellent performance in the final year projects. This prestigious award aims to recognize students who have displayed excellence in their pursuit of knowledge in surveying and the built environment by producing outstanding research work in this field. Miss Sit, under the supervision of Ir Dr Wallace LAI, Associate Head of LSGI, has been awarded the Top Award (Land Surveying) for her project titled 'Discovering and Unfolding WWII Heritages with Geospatial Technologies in the Gin Drinkers Line'. Meanwhile, Mr Mok, under the guidance of Prof. John SHI, Chair Professor of Geographical Information Science and Remote Sensing from LSGI, has received the Merit Award (Land Surveying) for his project titled 'Point Cloud Integration of Backpack laser scanner and UAV photogrammetry'. The award presentation ceremony will be held in the late July 2024. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to two of our BSc students for their remarkable academic achievements!

PolyU LSGI STEAM Talks for Secondary Schools Students 2024

The Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI) is organizing a STEAM Talk Series with the aim of introducing daily life applications and potential developments in Geo-Informatics. The series will cover a wide range of topics, including Land Surveying, Remote Sensing, Global Positioning System (GPS), Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), Geographic Information Science (GIS), and Underground Utilities Imaging and Diagnosis. We are delighted to invite all secondary schools to participate in our STEAM Talk Series in 2024. STEAM Talk Series Topics: Smart City and 3D Mapping in HK (智慧城巿及三維地圖的應用) Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Smart City Applications (全球導航衛星系統與智慧城市應用) Unfolding HK Lost WWII Heritage with Geo-spatial Science (尋找隱世二戰遺跡：地理空間科學篇) Problem Solving by Digital Maps and Geographic Information System (GIS) (以數字地圖和地理訊息系統解難) Seeing and Unseen Underground Utilities in 3D (三維地下管線測量) Observing and Measuring the Earth from Space (從太空觀測地球) IoT and Remote Sensing for Tree Monitoring (如何利用IoT及遙感技術監測城市樹木) Date:   Until July 2024 (exact date to be suggested by school) Target audience:   S.2 – S.6 Students (both Art and Science students are welcome) Medium:   Cantonese or English Venue:   Secondary School or PolyU (a lab tour to be arranged at PolyU) Speaker:   Academic Staff from the Department of LSGI Please click here to know more the description for the STEAM talk topics. Interested parties please fill in the online application form to indicate your preference of talk. For any questions, please feel free to contact Ms Stephanie Cheung at 3400 3662 or stephanie.sy.cheung@polyu.edu.hk. Please find more about LSGI at our Facebook or Youtube channel.  LSGI Undergraduate Programme in 2024/25 BSc (Hons) Scheme in Spatial Data Science and Smart Cities (JS3130)