Hongchao Fan

Hongchao Fan is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). His research focuses on 3D city modeling (digital twins), laser scanning, photogrammetry, and spatial data mining using crowdsourcing data, with applications in urban infrastructure, cultural heritage preservation, and solar energy assessment.

Key research areas:

• 3D building reconstruction from point clouds
• Knowledge graph integration for urban data
• OpenStreetMap (OSM) data inequality analysis
• Solar energy potential modeling in Nordic cities
• Machine learning for geospatial applications

Current projects:

• Digitalization for Culture Heritage (2025-2028, Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills)
• MobilityLab Stor-Trondheim (MoST) (2024-2026, digital twins for transportation models)
• Hellios (2022-2024, solar energy in Nordic cities)
• Deep learning 3D building models (NTNU Digital, 2021-2025)

Technical expertise: Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) data processing, semantic facade reconstruction, photogrammetric algorithms, and GIS-based decision support systems. He serves as Associate Editor for Big Earth Data and Geo-Spatial Information Science.