Students from the Department of Land Surveying and Geospatial Science (LSGS) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) have received awards in two competitions for projects addressing coastal flood risk and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) navigation in challenging environments.
1. LSGS PhD Candidate Receives "GIS Rising Star" Award at the 14th College GIS Forum
LI Guangyue, a PhD candidate in the Department of Land Surveying and Geospatial Science (LSGS) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), has received the GIS Rising Star award at the 2026 14th College GIS Forum, held in Wuhan in November.
First held in 2006, the College GIS Forum is one of the most influential annual gatherings of China's GIS education and research community. This year's forum marked its 20th anniversary under the theme "Heritage and Vision", and was co-hosted by China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) and Wuhan University. Alongside awards for established scholars and teaching achievements, the forum gives the GIS Rising Star award to graduate students who have produced outstanding GIS research. This year, 14 students from universities across the country received it after expert review.
At the forum's Rising Star session, LI gave a talk titled "Towards Cross-City Individual Mobility Prediction". Related work won first place at ACM SIGSPATIAL GISCUP 2025. (Supervisor: Prof. Yang XU, Associate Head (Partnership) & Associate Professor of LSGS)
2. In a separate achievement, an interdisciplinary team led by LSGS undergraduates won the Best Student Team Award at the PolyU × Industrial Bank International Future Challenge 2026 (Hefei Regional Competition). The competition brought together young innovators and research teams from Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland and overseas. Aligned with the national 15th Five-Year Plan and the “AI+” initiative, it focuses on frontier technologies and the translation of research into practical applications.
The winning project, Aircraft Localisation Using Damage-Resilient Landmarks and Onboard Vision (Project No. IFC26_516), addresses navigation challenges faced by UAVs during emergency response, post-disaster surveys and geospatial inspection.
The proposed system combines a multi-level regional landmark database with onboard visual sensing and spatial geometric optimisation. It is designed to maintain reliable autonomous localisation even when satellite signals are lost and some landmarks have been damaged, offering potential applications in post-disaster search and rescue and other demanding operational settings.
The team is led by ZHAO Hengyao, a third-year undergraduate in Urban Informatics, and includes fellow Urban Informatics undergraduates DONG Zhanhao and CHEN Xiaodong, together with SHEN Xian’ao, an undergraduate in Data Science and Analytics. The team will continue refining the technical solution and exploring opportunities for practical deployment. (Supervisor: Ms. Serein HAN, Scientific Officer of LSGS)
3. GONG Yuxuan, ZHU Di and YANG Yuening won Second Prize in the Paper Category of the 18th National University GIS Skills Competition. Their award-winning paper examines potential coastal inundation and associated economic losses in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area.
The competition provides a national platform for university students to demonstrate their capabilities in geographic information systems (GIS). Its paper category assesses the scientific quality, originality and practical relevance of GIS-based research, alongside research standards and compliance with submission requirements.
The team developed water-level scenarios for 2100 incorporating Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), historical typhoon-induced storm surges and an extreme scenario involving rapid ice-sheet melt. Using a connectivity-based bathtub inundation model, they mapped potentially flooded areas and quantified inundation extent, affected land-use types and potential economic losses.
The findings show that economic losses increase disproportionately as water levels rise, with extreme scenarios determining the upper bound of potential risk. The study provides quantitative evidence to support coastal adaptation planning across the Greater Bay Area. (Supervisor: Ms. Serein HAN, Scientific Officer of LSGS)
