Prof Tao Cheng

Research summary

Prof Cheng is the world leading expert in  the principles and practice of (Big) spatio-temporal data analytics. She has developed theories and methods to model and predict space-time processes by statistical and machine learning approaches  and has first-hand experience of big data analytics in urban mobility,  intelligent policing, retail business and hazard prevention. 

In partner with Met Police, she is leading the CPC project (Crime, Policing and Citizenship - Space-Time Interaction of Dynamic Networks, www.ucl.ac.uk/cpc, EPSRC, £1.4M); part of the Global Uncertainty Programme; which aims to understand and predict when, where and how criminal activities emerge and are sustained. It draws upon a broad-spectrum of expertise in four departments across two facilities in UCL. There are 4 PDRAs and 6 PhD students working on the CPC project.

With Transport for London, she led the STANDARD project (http://standard.cege.ucl.ac.uk); the first attempt to mine transport network data in order to understand congestion in Central London (EPSRC, £794,570). STANDARD presents an innovative approach to integrated space-time analysis of traffic, using concepts from network complexity and spatio-temporal data mining.

She is the Co-I of the Consumer Data Research Centre (http://cdrc.ac.uk), a multi-institution laboratory which discovers, mines, analyses and synthesises consumer-related datasets from around the UK.  CDRC is the largest project funded by UK ESRC Big Data initiatives (£6.1M), a national platform and a service that will unlock the potential of ‘Big’ retail data for research and public service delivery.  

Prof. Cheng is also a Co-I on the FP7 INFRARISK project (http://www.infrarisk-fp7.eu, Novel Indicators for identifying critical INFRAstructure at RISK from natural hazards, €2.8M, 2013-16), developing reliable stress tests to establish the resilience of critical European infrastructures to rare low frequency extreme events and to aid decision making in the long term regarding robust infrastructure development and protection of existing infrastructure.

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 developed to detect hybrid travel modes using sparse GPS data log. 

Tao Cheng is supervising 4 PDRAs and 5 PhD students.

Teaching summary

Prof Cheng has studied and lectured in China, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, France and the UK. She 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. 

She has been the Director of MSc in GISci (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/gis), a well-established and highly regarded course for two decades. She is the founder and Director of MSc in Space-Time Analytics (http://www/ucl.ac.uk/sta), a new MSc in data science. For both MSc courses, she gives lectures on GIS Principles & Technology and Spatio-Temporal Analysis and Data Mining.

Education

Wageningen Universiteit

Doctorate, Doctor of Philosophy | 1999

Wuhan Technical University of Surveying and Mapping

Other higher degree, Master of Science | 1992

Wuhan Technical University of Surveying and Mapping

First Degree, Bachelor of Science | 1989

Publications

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