Beginning in the fall of 2022, Dr. Wei Zhai is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Texas at San Antonio, focusing on urban resilience and urban science.

Dr. Zhai’s research interests center on how to make cities smart and resilient in the face of local and global environmental change. More specifically, his current research agenda is threefold. (i) He leverages emerging big data and advanced methods to reexamine disaster resilience before, during, and after extreme weather events. (ii) He also studies the quality of planning documents and how plans can be improved to foster transformative actions in the context of climate change. (iii) His third research area is developing and applying geospatial data science methods for better sensing human behavior, social equity, and urban dynamics.

Dr. Zhai’s recent work is published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research, Journal of the American Planning Association, Urban Studies, and Annals of the American Association of Geographers. Through an emphasis on creative independent thinking, mutual learning, and special attention to diversity, he aims to create an inclusive and encouraging learning environment for students. He looks forward to collaborating widely with researchers in the field of Urban Planning, Geography, GIScience, Computer Science,Trasnportation, etc.

Research Interests: Urban Resilience, Environmental Planning, Urban Computing, Urban Data Science, GeoAI

Email: wei.zhai@utsa.edu

Education

• Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning, University of Florida, 2021 May
• M.Eng. in Computer Engineering, University of Florida, 2020 May
• Master of City Planning, Tsinghua University, 2017 June
• B.Eng. in Urban Planning, Hunan University, 2015 June

Work experience

• 2022 August- , School of Architecture and Planning, University of Texas at San Antonio
  • Assistant Professor
• 2021 August- 2022 June, Department of Geography, Hong Kong Baptist University
  • Assistant Professor

Service

Academic service

• Editoral Board Member, Travel Behaivour & Society, 2022-,
• Reviewer for Annals of the American Association of Geographers; Computers, Environment, and Urban Systems; Cities; Travel Behavior and Society; Journal of Advanced Transportation; Computational Urban Science; International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction; Applied Geography; Journal of Cleaner Production; Remote Sensing; International Journal of Information Management; BMJ Global Health; Environment and Planning A; International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health; Plos One

Professional service

• Executive Committee Member, Hong Kong Geographical Association, 2021-2022
• Executive Committee Member, Planning and Criterion Council, China Association for Disaster Prevention, 2021-2022