National Science Foundation
CAREER Award (# 2339174)
CAREER: A Cyberinfrastructure Enabled Hybrid Spatial Decision Support System for Improving Coastal Resilience to Flood Risks
RESEARCH INTERESTS
With the increased frequency of natural hazards, disasters, and consequent massive losses, there is a critical need for building urban resilience and improving urban sustainability. Spatial decision support systems (SDSSs) have been well studied in the context of GIS and various related domains. New challenges and opportunities have arisen with regard to transforming SDSSs into intelligent capabilities for complex geospatial problem-solving and decision-making. The research group investigates intersections between GIScience, Decision Science, and Cyberinfrastructure to build scalable, high-performance, and open decision support software tools to support intelligent spatial decision-making in various application domains (e.g., disaster management, water resources management, agriculture risk management, national security, and critical infrastructure protection). Our research involved several inter-related sub-research themes:
1. Cyberinfrastructure and data-intensive research
2. Human-centered decision-making
3. Spatial uncertainty analysis and modeling
4. Natural Language Processing such as social sensing, spatial knowledge graph, and GPT
5. Cognitive mapping
6. Human environment interactions
7. Spatiotemporal data modeling and population dynamics
8. Disaster management
OPPORTUNITIES
We are actively recruiting M.S. and Ph.D. graduate students who are interested in Geographic Information Science and Systems, Geo-computation, spatial decision-making, and data-Intensive research. Financial support and/or research/teaching assistantships are available to qualified students. If you are interested, please contact Dr. Zhe Zhang via email zhezhang@tamu.edu
SELECTED MEDIA COVERAGE
HPC Wire. NSF grant supports Texas A&M Acquisition of High-Performance Computing Platform. 2020.
Texas A&M High-Performance Research Computing. NSF ACES, 2021.
Texas A&M Today. NSF funds Texas A&M research on west coast fisheries management, 2021.
LATEST NEWS
[Funding Award, 2023] Dr. Zhang received National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award (#2339174), Sole PI, $548,302
CAREER: A Cyberinfrastructure Enabled Hybrid Spatial Decision Support System for Improving Coastal Resilience to Flood Risks
[Funding Award, 2023] Dr. Zhang awarded NSF CyberTraining project (#2321069), PI, $379,995.00
Collaborative Research: CyberTraining: Implementation: Small: Broadening Adoption of Cyberinfrastructure and Research Workforce Development for Disaster Management
[Funding Award, 2023] Dr. Zhang awarded a NSF CC* project (# 2322377), Co-PI, $499,527
[Funding Award, 2023] Dr. Zhang awarded a NSF workshop project (# 2330330), PI, $25,020
[Funding Award, 2022] Dr. Zhang serves as a Co-PI for the project "Design & Analytics Lab for Urban Artificial Intelligence (DAL), $300,000, Texas A&M Data Science Institute.
[Funding Award, 2022] Dr. Zhang serves as an Institutional PI for the project " Equity and Environmental Justice
A spatial decision support system for identifying heat vulnerability based on a comprehensive energy budget model and multi-criteria decision analysis in Oklahoma City", $149,163, NASA.
[Student Achievement, 2023] Mr. Nanzhou Hu has successfully defended his Master's thesis! Congratulations!
[Student Achievement, 2023] Mr. Nanzhou Hu won the Honorable Mention Award at 2023 AAG Robert Raskin student competition! Congratulations!
[Student Achievement, 2023] Mr. Zhenlei Song won the Third Place at 2023 AAG Robert Raskin student competition! Congratulations!
[Student Achievement, 2023] Mr. Diya Li received a summer internship offer from ESRI! Congratulations!
[Conference, March, 2023] Dr. Zhang co-organized AAG 2023 Symposium on Harnessing the Geospatial Data Revolution for Sustainability Solution!
[Youth STEM and Science Exhibition, November 5, 2022] CIDI-Spatial lab has organized "Girls Exploring Math and Science" exhibition at Houston Museum of Natural Science!
[Conference Presentation] Mr. Shuyang Zhang has successfully completed his Master's thesis and graduated in August 2022! He found a job in China National Petroleum Corporation! Congratulations!
[Conference Presentation] Dr. Zhang served as an organizer and a panelist of a session called "AI in Spatial Decision Support " in 2022 University of Consortium for Geographic Information Science Symposium.
[Student Achievement] Diya Li and Zhenlei Song won the First Place ($1500) and Best Presentation award ($500)at 2022 Texas A&M student data science competition! Congratulations!
[Student Achievement] Ms. Kelly Corzo received a job offer from ESRI as technical consultant! Congratulations!
[Leadership & Funding April 2022] Dr. Zhang was awarded University Consortium for Geographic Information Science Community Champion! Up to three proposals were selected in the year 2022! Congratulations!
[Leadership Feb 2022] Dr. Zhang was elected as the Vice-Chair of the Cyberinfrastructure specialty group at the American Association of Geographers! Congratulations!
[Competition Feb 22] Mr. Diya Li and Mr. Shuyang Zhang won second place in the AAG Robert Raskin student paper competition! Congratulations!
[Workshop-Presentation Feb 2022] Dr. Zhang is invited to give a talk at the Digital Twin workshop organized by Texas A&M Data Science Institute.
[Conference-Presentation Nov 2021] Dr. Zhang is invited to give a Keynote Lecture at the National Land Survey of Finland's winter seminar.
[Conference-Presentation ] Dr. Zhang will serve as a Co-Chair for the AAG 2022 Symposium on Data-Intensive Geospatial Understanding in the Era of AI and CyberGIS.
[Publication- October 2021] Dr. Zhang and Mr Diya Li's paper has been accepted by 2021 ACM Sigspatial GeoSearch workshop! Congratulations!
[Publication- October 2021] Mr. Diya Li's paper has been accepted by 2021 ACM Sigspatial GeoSearch workshop! Congratulations!
[Publication- October 2021] Mr. Ziyi Zhang's paper has been accepted by 2021 ACM Sigspatial HANIMOB workshop! Congratulations!
[Funding Award- September 2021] Dr. Zhang, Sole PI, National Geographic Society Education Grant!
[Funding Award- September 2021] Dr. Zhang, Co-PI, NSF Convergence Accelerator Track E: Combining high-resolution climate simulations with ocean biogeochemistry, fisheries and decision-making models to improve sustainable fisheries, $749,548, National Science Foundation-Office of Integrative Activities
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2137684&HistoricalAwards=false
[Funding Award-September 2021] Dr. Zhang, Co-I , Category II: ACES - Accelerating Computing for Emerging Sciences, $ 10,000,000, National Science Foundation-Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure.
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2137684&HistoricalAwards=false
[Publication - August 2021] Dr. Zhang has organized a special issue titled "Cyberinfrastructure and Intelligent Spatial Decision Support Systems" in Transactions in GIS journal.
Zhang, Zhe, Lei Zou, Wenwen Li, Lynn Usery, Jochen Albrecht, and Marc Armstrong., 2021. Cyberinfrastructure and intelligent spatial decision support systems, Transactions in GIS, 25(4), 1651-1653.
[Conference presentation- July 2021] Graduate student Mr. Shuyang Zhang gave a talk at the 46th Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop.
[Software - July 2021] CIDI-Spatial Lab has developed a computer cluster based on the advanced cyberinfrastructure. The BluPix app is now hosted by our cyberinfrastructure cluster at:
[Invited Talk- June 2021] Dr. Zhang and graduate student Mr. Diya Li were invited to give a talk at Texas A&M High Performance Research Computing Center on a K-12 summer camp.
[Invited Talk- May 2021] Dr. Zhang were invited to give a talk at Texas A&M GeoX Summer Camp.
[Article Accepted - Jan 2021] Two articles were published.
Jiang, H., Hu, H., Li, B., Zhang, Z., Wang, S. and Lin, T., 2021. Understanding the non-stationary relationships between corn yields and meteorology via a spatiotemporally varying coefficient model. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 301, p.108340.
Li, Yao, Huilin Gao, George H. Allen, and Zhe Zhang. "Constructing Reservoir Area–Volume–Elevation Curve from TanDEM-X DEM Data." IEEE journal of selected topics in applied earth observations and remote sensing 14 (2021): 2249-2257.
[Funding Award- Jan 2021] Dr. Zhe Zhang, Co-PI, Impact of COVID-19 Induced Active Transportation Demand on the Built Environment and Public Health, $90,000, US Department of Transportation
[Funding Award- December 2020] Dr. Zhe Zhang, PI, Texas A&M President’s Excellence Fund: T3 Grant, Human-Centered Decision Support System for Improving Urban Resilience in Disaster Management: $32,000
[Funding Award - Sep 2020] Dr. Zhang, PI, Texas A&M TAMIDS Data Resource Development Program
A Spatial Decision Support System for Cardiovascular Disease Risk Assessment in Response to the COVID-19 Crisis: $27,000.
[Funding Award - Sep 2020] Dr. Zhang, PI, An Intelligent Spatial Decision Support System based on Citizen Science for Driving Resilience in Coastal Communities, $20,000, Texas A&M School of Innovation- Innovation [X].
[Funding Award - Sep 2020] Dr. Zhang, Co-PI, MRI: Acquisition of FASTER - Fostering Accelerated Sciences Transformation Education and Research, $3,090,000, National Science Foundation
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2019129&HistoricalAwards=false
[Funding Award- Sep 2020] Dr. Zhang, PI, K-12 Geography and GIS education program- Texas Youth Action Network, $10,000, Texas Department of State Health Services
[Funding Award - Sep 2020] Dr. Zhang, Co-PI, A Hybrid Decision Support System for Driving Resiliency in Texas Coastal Communities, $300,000, NOAA
[Funding Award - June 2020] Dr. Zhang, PI, Social Vulnerability, Mobility, and COVID-19 Spatial Mortality Patterns, $1000, National Science Foundation- Natural Hazard Center.
[Software- July 2020] The research group developed a Health Space & Time Web App.
The app illustrates the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases at a spatiotemporal scale for the United States. It also demonstrates the spatiotemporal depressive symptoms caused by COVID-19 using social media data mining. The Health Space & Time application is available from here: https://arcg.is/1qmSqi
[Publication- July 2020] Graduate student Mr. Diya Li published a paper.
Li, D., Chaudhary, H., and Zhang, Z., 2020. Modeling Spatiotemporal Pattern of Depressive Symptoms Caused by COVID-19 Using Social Media Data Mining. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(14), 4988.
[Seminar - Feb 2020] Dr. Michael Goodchild came to visit our lab and gave a talk on Convergent GIScience.