Dr. Lei Zou’s research interest is mining geospatial Big Data to analyze, model, and manage human-environment interactions. During the past few years, he has participated in a number of research projects funded by National Science Foundation (NSF), USGS, Louisiana Sea Grant, and Netherlands RAAK Public Grant. Increasingly frequent natural hazards and global environmental changes have posted huge challenges to the sustainability of human communities. Meanwhile, human behaviors are also changing the landscape and ecology of planet earth. Understanding the impacts and feedbacks between human and natural systems is the key to build sustainable futures for both systems. To build disaster resilience and long-term sustainability, his research focus on:
location-based social media data mining for smart emergency management;
web harvesting and Deep Learning for geospatial data collection and analysis;
coupled natural-human system modeling for population dynamics, land loss and urban growth;
assessment models of community resilience to natural hazards.
