Chuanrong (Cindy) Zhang

Department Head and Professor, Geography

Primary Research Theme

Social-Ecological Systems

Secondary Research Themes

Economic and Community Development, People and the City

Research Interests

Zhang is a broadly trained geographer with substantive interests in geospatial technologies and its application for smart cities. Her research is interdisciplinary. In particular, her research concentrate on  geographical information science (GIS), remote sensing, geo-spatial statistics, geocomputation, GIS Cyberinfrastructure, and their applications in urban land use/cover studies, managing disasters and natural resources for cities, urban landscape ecology, urban environmental planning, as well as urban transportation studies.

Recent Cities-related Projects

  • Building block level urban land-use information retrieval based on Google Street View images: in this study, we proposed a method to derive detailed land-use information at building block level based on scene classification algorithms and GSV images.
  • Detecting horizontal and vertical urban growth from medium resolution imagery and its relationships with major socioeconomic factors: The objectives of this study are (1) to develop an integrative framework for estimating horizontal and vertical urban growth with medium resolution RS imagery and multisource data, and (2) to explore the temporal horizontal and vertical expansions of Guangzhou from 1993 to 2013 and their relationships with major socioeconomic factors (i.e. population density, real gross domestic product (GDP), and fixed investment (i.e. investment infixed assets such as land, buildings).
  • Parcel-based urban land use classification in megacity using airborneLiDAR, high resolution orthoimagery, and Google Street View: The main objectives of this study are (1) to test the performance of a parcel-based land use classification method using a Random Forest classifier with LiDAR data, HRO, and GSV images in a megacity, and (2) to explore the use of GSV in separating parcels of mixed residential & commercial buildings from other land use par-cels.

Selected Urban-Related Publications

Zhai, R., W. Li, C. Zhang, W. Zhang, and W. Wang. 2019. The transiogram as a graphic metric for characterizing the spatial patterns of landscapes. Landscape Ecology. 34(9): 2103-2121. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-018-0760-7”

Li, X.-K., C. Zhang, W. Li, R.O. Anyah, and J. Tian. 2019. Exploring the trend, prediction and driving forces of aerosols using satellite and ground data, and implications for climate change mitigation. Journal of Cleaner Production, 223: 238-251.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.03.121.”

Zhang, W., W. Li, C. Zhang, D. Hanink, Y. Liu, and R. Zhai. 2018. Analyzing horizontal and vertical urban expansions in three East Asian megacities with the SS-coMCRF model. Landscape and Urban Planning 177, 114-127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2018.04.010.

Yu, J., W. Li, and C. Zhang. 2019. A framework of experimental transiogram modeling for Markov chain geostatistical simulation of landscape categories. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 73: 16-26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys. 2018.07.007″

Xu H., C. Zhang, W. Li, W. Zhang, and H. Yin. 2018. Economic growth and carbon emission in China: a spatial econometric Kuznets curve? Zbornik Radova Ekonomski Fakultet u Rijeka, 36(1), 9-26. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18045/zbefri. 2018.1.9

Huang Y., Q. Yan, and C. Zhang. 2018. Spatial-Temporal Distribution Characteristics of PM2.5 in China in 2016. Journal of Geovisualization and Spatial Analysis. 2: 12 https://doi.org/10.1007/s41651-018-0019-5

Lu H., C. Zhang, G. Liu, X. Ye, and C. Miao. 2018. Mapping China’s Ghost Cities through the Combination of Nighttime Satellite Data and Daytime Satellite Data. Remote Sensing10, 1037; doi:10.3390/rs10071037. http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/10/7/1037”

Zhang, W., W. Li, C. Zhang, D. Hanink, Y. Liu, and R. Zhai. 2018. Analyzing horizontal and vertical urban expansions in three East Asian megacities with the SS-coMCRF model. Landscape and Urban Planning 177, 114-127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2018.04.010.

Yu J., C. Zhang, J. Wen, W. Li, D. Liu, and H. Xu. 2018. Integrating Multi-agent Evacuation Simulation and Multi-criteria Evaluation for Spatial Allocation of Urban Emergency Shelters. International Journal of Geographical Information Science https://doi.org/10.1080/13658816.2018.1463442“