Heng Cai

Dr. Heng Cai is an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University, leading the GIScience for Resilience (GIResilience) Research Group. Her work focuses on geographic information science, disaster resilience, socio-environmental sustainability, and environmental health. She develops geospatial data mining and decision-support tools to model human-environment interactions under climate change and natural hazards.

Education: Ph.D. in Environmental Science (Louisiana State University), M.S. in Geographic Information Science (Chinese Academy of Sciences), B.E. in Surveying and Mapping (China University of Geosciences).

Research interests include geospatial data science, hazard modeling, and resilience assessment. Her group has pioneered studies on land loss prediction in coastal Louisiana, social media analysis for disaster response, and cyberGIS platforms like PRIME. Recent work emphasizes climate adaptation strategies and urban resilience frameworks.

Publications span interdisciplinary journals like Remote Sensing, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, and International Journal of Digital Earth. She actively collaborates with NASA and disaster management agencies, securing grants for projects like HeatSMART and U-CARE.

Labs/Teams: GIResilience Group (www.gis-resilience.info) focuses on innovative geospatial solutions for societal resilience. She mentors undergraduate and graduate students in GIS programming, webGIS, and geodatabase applications.