Dr. Raja Sengupta of Department of Geography & Bieler School of Environment, McGill University, Quebec, Canada

This session will feature Dr. Raja Sengupta, Associate Professor jointly appointed in the Department of Geography and Bieler School of Environment at McGill University, Quebec, Canada. His talk, titled "Using Emerging Geospatial Technologies to Understand Patterns of Vulnerability in Cities," will explore how spatially-explicit datasets, combined with geospatial analysis and machine learning, can identify different forms of urban vulnerability.

The presentation will use the city of Montreal as a case study, examining two distinct yet interconnected dimensions of urban vulnerability. The first focuses on food security, where reinforcement learning was used to train agents representing shoppers to understand how access to reasonably priced nutritional food may be constrained by competitive sales policies adopted by retail chains. The second examines intra-city variability of Urban Heat Islands using low-cost sensor data on temperature and relative humidity.

Dr. Sengupta will also discuss the broader application of Agent-Based Models (ABMs) and low-cost sensors with geospatial technologies to understand and mitigate socio-economic and environmental concerns affecting cities worldwide.

Key Learning Outcomes

Participants will gain:

• Understanding of spatial patterns of urban vulnerability and their multidimensional nature
• Insights into Agent-Based Models (ABMs) and their application in urban geospatial research
• Knowledge of reinforcement learning approaches for modelling human behaviour in urban systems
• Exposure to low-cost sensor technologies for detecting environmental phenomena such as Urban Heat Islands
• Awareness of geospatial analysis and machine learning techniques for studying food security and heat exposure
• Perspectives on emerging smart city research combining complexity theory, GIS, and urban analytics

Target Audience

• Undergraduate and postgraduate students
• Research scholars in GIS, urban studies, remote sensing, geospatial science, and environmental science
• Faculty members and researchers
• IEEE GRSS members
• Professionals and enthusiasts interested in smart cities, urban analytics, agent-based modelling, and geospatial technologies

Session Format

• Expert Lecture / Invited Talk
• Interactive Q&A and discussion session

Biography:

Dr. Raja Sengupta is an Associate Professor jointly appointed in the Department of Geography and the Bieler School of Environment at McGill University, Quebec, Canada. His research within GIS focuses on complexity theory and the development of Agent-Based Models (ABMs), with applications spanning historical movement modelling to understanding urban socio-economic dynamics.

His recent work extends to low-cost sensors for detecting environmental phenomena such as Urban Heat Islands, studying their suitability as data collection methods for intra-city environmental monitoring. He has authored and co-authored several journal papers and book chapters, and has co-edited two volumes — "Intelligence for Future Cities: Planning Through Big Data and Urban Analytics" and "Agent-Based Models and Complexity Science in the Age of Geospatial Big Data" — both published by Springer Nature.

Dr. Sengupta is a current member of the Topical Advisory Panel of the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information and a former Editorial Board member of Transactions in GIS. He holds several grants from Canada's NSERC and SSHRC on cities and vulnerability, and is a co-PI on a CIHR-funded "Healthy and Smart Cities" grant.

Email:

Address:Department of Geography & Bieler School of Environment, McGill University, Quebec, Canada