Forum on the Low-Altitude Economy and Smart City Synergies

Topic: Building the 3D Navigation Map as the New Infrastructure of Low-altitude Economy 
 
Speaker Profile:
Prof CHEN Jun is the past president of ISPRS. As a leading scientist affiliated with National Geomatics Center of China, he is an expert in operational land cover and topographic mapping with space/airborne remote sensing. He had led China’s global land cover mapping project and produced the world’s first 30-m earth land cover map, GlobeLand30, which has been widely utilized by United Nations and about 140 countries. He has also established a dynamic topographic updating system and produced accurate maps for whole of China. He had also completed a pioneer project to measure the progress toward SDGs at a local level in China (i.e., Deqing County) with geospatial and statistical information, which was selected and announced by UN as one of the first 16 good SDGs practices in 2020. During his 40 year’s professional career, CHEN Jun has published more than 300 publications and 4 books, and received a number of international and national scientific awards. He was elected as an academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2019, elected as a honorary member of ISPRS in 2022, and nominated as a fellow of International Scientific Council.

Topic: Common Spatial Data Infrastructure (CSDI) – “nice to have” or “bread and butter” ?
 
Abstract :
CSDI is one of the digital infrastructures to support Smart City and Innovation and Technology Development Blueprint, thus the digital economy. Based on the journey of CSDI development, the speaker would like to share his experience and challenges faced when driving the CSDI, particularly on how to engage different sectors from professionals to general public to buy in how spatial data sharing and Geo-technology can help their corporate business and make their lives easier through different channels, use cases and Geospatial Lab.  

Speaker Profile:
Sr CHAN possesses over 20 years professional experiences covers engineering surveying, hydrographic surveying, cadastral surveying and geospatial data analysis/management. Over the past few years, Sr CHAN has been actively involved in the smart city and Common Spatial Development Infrastructure (CSDI) development.

Topic: Urban Air Mobility and Its New Infrastructure: Low-Altitude Public Road Networks

Abstract:
Modern science and technology empowers the new connotation of urban air mobility. The era of low-altitude economy has brought the development of urban air mobility into the fast lane.

One of the important infrastructures for future urban air mobility is the low-altitude public road network over the urban sky (low-altitude air routes). Planning and construction of low-altitude air routes is an important basic and pre-emptive work to accommodate future urban air mobility and the growth of low-altitude economy.

How can urban low-altitude airspace resources be turned into a public airway network that meets the needs of large-scale traffic flow of unmanned eVTOLs et al ? The whole process of planning, investment, construction, operation and maintenance from ground land resources to surface roads as well as the current municipal administrative management and operational management for surface transportation can be a good reference.  

Speaker Profile:  
Dr. Liao Xiaohan obtained his D. Phil from Oxford University in 1992, and became a remote-sensing researcher at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA in his early career. For the past 20 years, he worked as a deputy director general of high-tech department and of basic research department under the Ministry of Science and Technology of China. He also served as the director general of the National Remote Sensing Center of China, the head of the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research（IGSNRR）, Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS) until 2022. He is now a professor of IGSNRR, and served as the director general of CAAC Key-Lab for Low-Altitude Geographical Information and Route Planning. He worked as PIs for serval national science projects and his academic contributions include 1) a pioneer and an earlier leader in planning a protocol distribution of UAV remote-sensing network nationwide, and the first to introduce the concept of data carrier for UAV observational network, which received recognition from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, 2) the chief designer leading the development of a UAV regulation cloud management system (CAS SKYNET) and received an official license for experimental operation from CAAC, 3) development of  a technological framework of UAV public air-route planning, which were endorsed by CAS and CAAC, 4) the chair of the IEEE SA P1939.1 working group and promoted the approval and publication of the Standard for a Framework for Structuring Low Altitude Airspace for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Operations.

Topic: Integrated Air-Ground Transport Modeling for Cross-City Travel in the Greater Bay Area

Topic: Urban Informatics Enabled Low-Altitude Economy

Speaker Profile:
Professor John Shi is currently the Director of Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Smart Cities Research Institute of PolyU, Chair Professor in Geographic Information Science and Remote Sensing. He is Academician of International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, Fellow of Academy of Social Sciences (UK), Fellow of The Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors, and Fellow of Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. He earned his doctoral degree from Germany in 1994. Professor Shi also serves as President of International Society for Urban Informatics and Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Urban Informatics.

His research covers urban informatics for smart cities, geographic information science and remote sensing, artificial-intelligence-based object extraction and change detection from satellite imagery, intelligent analytics and quality control for spatial big data, and mobile mapping and 3-D modelling based on LiDAR and remote sensing imagery. He has published over 300 research articles in journals indexed by Web of Science and 20 books. He is among the world’s top 2% cited researchers had owns over 40 patents.

Professor Shi has won State Natural Science Award, China’s highest award for fundamental research, in 2007; Distinguished Scholar Prize by CPGIS and Smart 50 Awards (US) in 2021; Gold Medals in 2021 & 2023 International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva; Founder’s Award by International Spatial Accuracy Research Association in 2020; Science and Technology Progress Award in Surveying and Mapping (Grand Award) in 2017; and Wang Zhizhuo Award by International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing in 2012.