Abstract: Geospatial discovery and innovation have been undergoing an extreme digital transformation enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and cyberGIS during the past decade. This transformational trend seems likely to persist into the foreseeable future. Meanwhile cyberGIS has emerged as a new generation of geographic information science and systems (GIS) based on holistic integration of high-performance and distributed computing, data-driven knowledge discovery, visualization and visual analytics, and collaborative problem-solving capabilities.

This presentation discusses challenges and opportunities for geospatial discovery and innovation to address an array of sustainability, energy, and environment challenges through synergistically advancing cyberGIS and geospatial AI.

Bio: Shaowen Wang is a professor and head of the Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science; and an affiliate professor of the Department of Computer Science, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, and School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He received a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Tianjin University, an M.S. in Geography from Peking University, and a Master of Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Iowa.