Journal
Discover Sustainability
Discover Sustainability is an open access journal publishing research across all fields relevant to sustainability.
Future human habitats—from dense cities, suburbs, to rural regions—face complex, interconnected challenges: climate change, health crises, mobility inequities, resource scarcity, and complex border dynamics. Geospatial analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI), powered by big data, offer transformative potential to understand and address these challenges inclusively. This Collection invites interdisciplinary research that harnesses geospatial analytics and GeoAI to advance habitat resilience, health, sustainability, and equity across all geographic scales—from continents, nations, and regions to cities, rural areas, and smaller communities within them. We encourage submissions utilizing both established and emerging methodologies that address some of the challenges covered in the collection's scope. This includes studies applying traditional analytical approaches to novel aspects of human habitats, as well as innovative research leveraging multidimensional frameworks (e.g., socioeconomic, institutional, jurisdictional), novel data integration (e.g., satellite/sensor networks, mobile sensing, administrative records), or advanced analytics (e.g., GeoAI, complex spatiotemporal modeling, causal inference).
Example topics include, but are not limited to:
• Urban-Rural Dynamics & Peri-urban Analysis
• Remote Sensing for Habitat Monitoring & Change Detection
• Multi-scale Environmental Exposure Assessment
• Spatial Epidemiology Modeling
• Equity in Access to Healthcare & Essential Services (urban, rural, cross-border)
• Cross-Border Health & Mobility Challenges
• Mobility & Accessibility for Disabled Populations (e.g., mobility-impaired, visually impaired)
• Disaster Risk Reduction & Response Across Habitats
• Spatial Dimensions of Social Vulnerability & Resilience
• AI for Sustainable Resource Management (water, energy, land)
• Climate Adaptation Planning & Infrastructure Resilience
• Leveraging Novel & Big Data for Habitat Insights
• Ethical GeoAI & Algorithmic Governance
• Geospatial Solutions for Welfare Support Systems
• Geographically Weighted Policy Analysis
This Collection emphasizes interdisciplinary research that harnesses geospatial analytics and AI to tackle challenges central to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We encourage studies that not only generate new knowledge but also provide actionable pathways toward improving human welfare, environmental sustainability, and societal resilience across human settlements—from densely populated cities to vulnerable rural landscapes and complex border regions.
Keywords:GeoAI; Spatiotemporal Modeling; Human Habitats; Sustainable Mobility; Health Equity; Spatial Epidemiology; Spatial Accessibility; Habitat Resilience; Environmental Sustainability; Cross-border Dynamics; Multidimensional Analysis; Urban-Rural Linkages
This Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 3, SDG 10, SDG 11, and SDG 13.
Submit your manuscript to this collection through a participating journal.
Journal
Discover Geoscience
Discover Geoscience is an open access journal publishing research across the full range of disciplines connected to geoscience, geophysics and geochemistry.
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Dong Liu
Dong Liu, PhD, Assistant Professor, School of Humanities and Social Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China. Dong conducts research in geospatial analytics, environmental health, mobility, and socio-spatial inequality. Dong currently serves as the Steering Commission Member & Secretary for the International Geographical Union (IGU) Transport and Geography Commission, Associate Editor for The International Encyclopedia of Geography of The American Association of Geographers, and Editorial Board member for the Journal of Transport Geography. -
Marynia Aniela Kolak
Marynia Aniela Kolak, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography & Geographic Information Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, United States. Marynia is a health geographer and spatial epidemiologist integrating a socio-ecological view of health, spatial data science, and a human-centered design approach to investigate regional and neighborhood health equity. Marynia serves as PI on the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) and Place project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and MPI on the Localize Opioid Use Disorder (LOUD) study by NIDA/NIH. Maryniais also on the communications team of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee at the Society for Epidemiological Research. -
Ling Yin
Ling Yin, PhD, Professor, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. . Her research interests include spatial data intelligence, urban computing and geographically epidemic modelling. Her developed approaches have been applied to urban governance domains such as infectious disease prevention and control, traffic management, and emergency response. In recent years, she has focused on spatiotemporal modeling and control of infectious diseases. Her work has been directly applied to the control of dengue fever, SARS-CoV-2 and influenza, providing technical support to the national and regional CDCs. With over 90 peer-reviewed publications in fields including GIS, computer science, public health, and urban studies, she also holds more than 20 authorized national patents, has led more than 20 research projects, and received 6 provincial/ministerial-level scientific awards. -
Katarzyna Sila-Nowicka
Katarzyna Sila-Nowicka, PhD, School of Environment, The University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her research interests cover a wide range of areas in GIScience, spatial data science, urban analytics, spatial statistics and spatial modelling, urban planning and remote sensing. The focus of her GIScience and urban analytics research interests lie in developing spatiotemporal analytics and modelling techniques to study and understand movement. Understanding human movement and its relationship to the urban and natural environment has crucial implications for studying modern global concerns and phenomena such as spread of diseases, traffic intensity, human mobility and accessibility to services, geoprivacy, natural hazards and migration. Her current and future research will contribute to understanding and solving these problems by advancing the knowledge of human movements and its dynamic relations with the environment. -
Teng Fei
Teng Fei, PhD, Associate Professor, School of Resource and Environmental Science, Wuhan University, China. His research leverages Geospatial Information Science (GIS) and remote sensing to address critical urban and environmental challenges. His primary expertise lies in Urban Geospatial Big Data analysis and Ecological Remote Sensing Applications. His research interests span Big Data Analysis, Health Geography, Human Emotional Landscapes, and the Urban Acoustic Environment. His work focuses on developing innovative methods to utilize geospatial big data for sustainable urban development. -
Mengzhu Zhang
Mengzhu Zhang, PhD, Assistant Professor, School of Urban Planning and Design, Peking University, China. She leads the PKU Urban Social Computation Lab. Her research integrates geography, sociology, and economics with advanced computational methods—such as big data analytics, social sensing, and geospatial modeling—to address critical issues like transport justice, platform urbanism, neighborhood change, and public service provision. Her work aims to inform evidence-based policymaking for inclusive and equitable urban and regional transitions. Her work aims to inform evidence-based policymaking for more inclusive and equitable urban/regional transition. -
Rafael H. M. Pereira
Rafael H. M. Pereira, PhD, Institute for Applied Economic Research, Brazil. He is a senior researcher (tenured) working in the fields of urban analytics, spatial data science and transport studies at IPEA, where he is currently the Head of Data Science. His research looks broadly at how urban and transport policies shape the spatial organization of cities, human mobility patterns as well as their impacts on social and health inequalities. He is particularly interested in the equity concerns underlying impact assessment of urban and transport planning policies and their effects on inequalities in access to opportunities. Rafa is also a visiting professor (Bousfield Distinguished Visitor in Planning) at the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto (2024-2025).
