Heng Cai
  • Assistant Professor
Google Scholar Profile

Biography

Dr. Heng Cai’s research primarily focuses on urban informatics, geospatial data science, human-environmental interactions. She leads the City Analytics & Informatics Research Group (https://www.gis-resilience.info). The research group integrates emerging and innovative geospatial data with advanced spatial analytics and computational methods to quantify urban dynamics and the coupled processes linking people, place, and the built environment. The team's work addresses societally relevant challenges including disaster management, human behavior and adaptation, environmental exposure and health impacts, and transportation monitoring. By transforming heterogeneous urban data streams into decision-relevant intelligence, her research contributes actionable insights for urban planning, disaster response, and environmental health policy. Dr. Cai received the Early-Career Research Fellowship Award in the Human Health and Community Resilience Track from the NASEM Gulf Research Program and is a 2025 TAMU Montague-Center for Teaching Excellence Scholar.

Dr. Cai is actively recruiting undergraduate, MS, and PhD students to join her research group at Texas A&M University. If you are interested in working in her research group, please email her at hengcai@tamu.edu with your CV/resume.

Courses

Applications in GIS
GIS Programming
WebGIS
GeoDatabases

Research Interests

  • Geographic Information Science
  • Geospatial Data Science
  • Socio-Environmental Sustainability
  • Disaster Resilience

Educational Background

  • Ph.D. Environmental Science, Louisiana State University
  • M.S. Geographic Information Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
  • B.E. Surveying and Mapping, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, China

Selected Publications

    • Cai H, Lam NSN, Zou L. 2022. Incorporating neighborhood-scale effect into land loss modeling using semivariograms. Journal of Geographic Systems. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10109-021-00372-4

    • Cai H. 2022. Overlay. The Geographic Information Science & Technology Body of Knowledge (1st Quarter 2022 Edition), John P. Wilson (ed.). DOI: 10.22224/gistbok/2022.1.2. gistbok.ucgis.org/bok-topics/overlay

    • Lam NSN, Cai H, Zou L. 2022. Editorial for the Special Issue: “Human-Environment Interactions Research Using Remote Sensing”. Remote Sensing.14(11):2720. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14112720

    • Zhou B, Zou L, Mostafavi A, Lin B, Yang M, Gharaibeh N, Cai H, Abedin J, Mandal D. 2022. VictimFinder: harvesting rescue requests on social media during disasters with BERT. Computers, Environment, and Urban Systems. 95: 101824. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2022.101824

    • Yang M, Zou L, Cai H, Qiang Y, Lin B, Zhou B, Abedin J, Mandal D. 2022. Spatial–Temporal Land Loss Modeling and Simulation in a Vulnerable Coast: A Case Study in Coastal Louisiana. Remote Sensing. 14(4):896. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14040896

    • Lin B, Zou L, Duffield N, Mostafavi A, Cai H, Zhou B, Tao J, Yang M, Mandal D, Abedin J. 2022. Revealing the Global Linguistic and Geographical Disparities of Public Awareness to Covid-19 Outbreak through social media. International Journal of Digital Earth. 15(1):868-889. https://doi.org/10.1080/17538947.2022.2070677

    • Correll R, Lam NSN, Mihunov V, Zou L, Cai H. 2021. Economics over Risk: Flooding is not the only driving factor of migration considerations on a vulnerable coast. Annals of the American Association of Geographers. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2020.1766409.

    • Zou L, Lam NSN, Shams S, Cai H, Meyer MA, Yang S, Lee K, Park SJ, Reams MA. 2019. Social and geographical disparities in Twitter use during Hurricane Harvey. International Journal of Digital Earth, DOI: 10.1080/17538947.2018.1545878.

    • Cai, H, Lam NSN, Zou L, Qiang Y. 2018. Modeling the dynamics of community resilience to coastal hazards using a Bayesian network. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(5):1260-1279.

    • Cai H, Lam NSN, Qiang Y, Zou L, Correll R, Mihunov V. 2018. A synthesis of resilience measurement methods and indices. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 31:844-855.

    • Zou L, Lam NSN, Cai H, Qiang Y. 2018. Mining Twitter data for improved understanding of disaster resilience. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(5): 1422-1441.

    • Lam NSN, Cheng WJ, Zou L, Cai H. 2018. Effects of landscape fragmentation on land loss. Remote Sensing of Environment, 209:253-262.

    • Lam NSN, Qiang Y, Li K, Cai H, Zou L, Mihunov V. 2018. Extending resilience assessment to dynamic system modeling: Perspectives on human dynamics and climate change research. Journal of Coastal Research, 85(sp1):1401-1405.

    • Lam NSN, Xu YJ, Liu KB, Dismukes DE, Reams MA, Pace RK, Qiang Y, Narra S, Li K, Bianchette T, Cai H, Zou L. 2018. Understanding the Mississippi River Delta as a coupled natural-human system: research methods, challenges, and prospects. Water, 10(8):1054.

    • Qiang Y, Lam NSN, Cai H, Zou L. 2017. Changes in exposure to flood hazards in the United States. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 107(6):1-19.

    • Cai H, Lam NSN, Zou L, Qiang Y, Li K. 2016. Assessing community resilience to coastal hazards in the Lower Mississippi River Basin. Water, 8(2):46.

    • Zou L, Kent J, Lam NSN, Cai H, Qiang Y, Li K. 2015. Evaluating land subsidence rates and their implications for land loss in the Lower Mississippi River Basin. Water, 8(1):10.

    • Li K, Lam NSN, Qiang Y, Zou L, Cai H. 2015. A cyberinfrastructure for community resilience assessment and visualization. Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 42(sup1):34-39.

Google Scholar Profile