Prof Tao Cheng
The Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) is one of the leading forces in the science of cities, generating new knowledge and insights for use in city planning, policy and design and drawing on the latest geospatial methods and ideas in computer-based visualisation and modelling. We are part of The Bartlett: UCL's global faculty of the built environment.
Profile
Biography
Tao Cheng is a Professor in GeoInformatics, and Director of SpceTimeLab (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/spacetimelab), at University College London. She has studied and lectured in China, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, France and the UK. She has broad knowledge and experience in Geographic Information Sciences (GISc), from data acquisition, to information processing, management and analysis, with applications in environmental monitoring, natural resource management, health, transport and crime studies. She has over 140 publications and is a past recipient of the U. V. Helava Award for the best paper in the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.
Tao Cheng has substantial experience of university teaching and learning at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She has taught a variety of subjects on GIS in both English and Chinese. Currently she gives lectures on Introduction to GIS (first year undergraduates), GIS Principles & Technology (MSc in GIS), and Spatio-Temporal Analysis and Data Mining (MSc in GIS).
She is the Director of MSc in GISci (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/gis), a well-established and highly regarded course for two decades.
Research Summary
Her research interests span network complexity, integrated spatio-temporal data mining (prediction, clustering, visualisation and simulation), Geocomputation, and uncertainty and quality of geographic information.
She currently leads the first attempt to mine complex real-time spatio-temporal transport network data in Central London: STANDARD (Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Network Data And Route Dynamics (http://standard.cege.ucl.ac.uk) is funded by EPSRC (2009-12) in partnership with Transport for London (TfL). Using real-time traffic data, STANDARD presents an innovative approach to integrated space-time analysis of traffic, using concepts from network complexity and spatio-temporal data mining.
Most recently, she led the successful bid for the CPC (Crime, Policing and Citizenship) project (PI, EPSRC 2012-15, £1,400,235) addressing the aims of RCUK’s Global Uncertainties Programme on crime, terrorism and ideologies and beliefs (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/cpc/). It draws upon a broad-spectrum of expertise in four departments across two facilities in UCL. There are 4 PDRAs and several PhD students working on the CPC project. She also joined the successful bid with colleagues in Arup and Imperial College for the Arup Global challenge (2011-2012), for the project ‘Enhancedinfrastructure resilience: GIS-based risk modelling’.
She also leads two Engineering Doctorate projects: the first is using Web-based geoportals to garner public trust in UK nuclear waste disposal locations (TrustWebGIS, funded by EPSRC/Arup: 2007-11) and the second is simulating the impact of driver behaviours upon congestion around large events in London (such as major football matches, carnivals and the Olympic Games: EPSRC/TfL: 2009-13). Additionally, an EPSRC Location & Timing KTN CASE Award (2009-2012) with u-blox UK (a geotagging company) is characterising travel behaviours using offline GPS data GeoTravelDiary.
Tao Cheng is supervising 4 PDRAs and 5 PhD students, and 3 MSc theses.
Research outputs
