Associate Professor
Turlington Hall 3120
Affiliate Faculty, UF Informatics Institute
Affiliate Faculty, UF Transportation Institute
ORCID: 0000-0001-5814-0805
(352) 294-7514
Focus Areas
- Focus Area 2: Medical Geography in Global Health (MGGH)
- Focus Area 3: Places, Networks, & Flows
- Focus Area 4: Geopolitics & The Global Economy
- Focus Area 5: Catastrophes, Conservation, and Conflict
Research Statement:
I am a geographer with research and teaching interests in urban transportation, human mobility, and accessibility. My current research focuses on three main areas: 1) relationships between people’s mobility within cities—including commuting, healthcare-seeking, and crime—and the urban built environment, 2) accessibility to opportunities, such as jobs, healthcare, food, and transportation infrastructure, and how it is affected by natural hazards, and, 3) network flow analysis and optimization of travel patterns related to commuting, bike sharing, healthcare, and food delivery.
My main research approach is the development and application of GIS, network analysis, and machine learning/AI techniques to reveal patterns of individual and group behaviors from big geospatial data associated with point patterns (traffic crashes, crime incidents) and networks (movement trajectory such as taxi cab GPS trajectory, smart card transaction data, and origin-destination flow such as commuting, bike sharing usage, and inpatient discharge). The goal is to convert data into knowledge to inform and evaluate place-based policies focused on transportation, land use, public health, and community safety.
Current Graduate Students
PhD
Md. Shaharier Alam
Zeyu He
Jinpeng Wang
Recent Graduate Students
Dr Yue Jing, Assistant Professor, University of North Dakota
Cade Gouin, Chief Operating Officer, Zenscape Marketing
Jinpeng Wang, PhD student, University of Florida
Recent Courses
- GEO 3602 Urban/Business Geography
- GEO 4700 Transportation Geography
- GIS 4113 Introduction to Spatial Networks
- GIS 6104 Spatial Networks
Recent Funded Projects
- 2023 –2026 Collaborative Research: ATD: Geospatial Modeling and Risk Mitigation for Human Movement Dynamics under Hurricane Threats, National Science Foundation, Co-PI
- 2023 – 2025 Co-I, Sunshine State Early Childhood Information Portal, Florida Division of Early Learning, Co-I.
Recent Publications
Wang, J., & Hu, Y. (2025). Constructing the commuting backbone network dataset for the United States. Scientific Data, 12, 1267.
Alam, M. S., & Hu, Y. (2025). Mobility disruption and recovery in southwest Florida’s elderly-dense communities during Hurricane Ian. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 141, 104648.
Yuan, Q., Hu, Y., Steiner, R., Manini, T. M., & Bai, X. (2025). Mindful walks: Understanding the connection between street characteristics and recreational walking routes in older adults with cognitive concerns. Cities, 162, 105969.
Luo, C., Hu, Y., & Wang, F. (2025). A big data approach to mitigating the MAUP in measuring excess commuting. Computational Urban Science, 5(1), 14.
Luo, C., Hu, Y., & Wang, F. (2025). A big data approach to modelling urban population density functions: from monocentricity to polycentricity. Annals of GIS, 31(2), 273-286.
Huang, J., & Hu, Y. (2025). A systematic review of immersive virtual reality applications in geography higher education. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 49(3), 295-312.
Xu, A., Hu, Y., & Wang, J. (2025). Unraveling the COVID-19 Impact on Spatiotemporal Dynamics of U.S. Domestic Migration: A Network Perspective. The Professional Geographer, 77(2), 104-120.
Wang, J., & Hu, Y. (2024). Unraveling hurricane Ian’s Impact: A multiscale analysis of mobility networks in Florida. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 136, 104482.
Wang, J., Hu, Y., Duan, L., & Michailidis, G. (2024). Analysing and visualising mobility vulnerability and recovery across Florida neighbourhoods: a case study of Hurricane Ian. Regional Studies, Regional Science, 11(1), 384-386.
He, Z., Hu, Y., Duan, L. L., & Michailidis, G. (2024). Returners and explorers dichotomy in the face of natural hazards. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 13184.
Hu, Y., Sherlock, P., Huang, J., Knopf, H. T., & Hall, J. M. (2024). Unveiling spatial mismatch in childcare supply and demand: An excess commuting analysis of home-to-childcare distance in subsidized families. Journal of Transport Geography, 116, 103829.
Jing, Y., & Hu, Y. (2024). Multiscale Complex Network Analysis of Commuting Efficiency: Urban Connectivity, Hierarchy, and Labor Market. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 114(8), 1681-1692.
Qiu, J., Jing, Y., Peng, W., Du, L., & Hu, Y. (2024). Identifying critical transfer zones to coordinate transit with on-demand services using crowdsourced trajectory data, Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, 28(3), 386-408.
Tanim, S. H., Reader, S., & Hu, Y. (2023). Predicting hurricane evacuation for local neighborhoods across a metropolitan region. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 99, 104117.
Xu, M., Zhou, H., Hu, Y., & Duan, L. L. (2023). Bayesian inference using the proximal mapping: Uncertainty quantification under varying dimensionality. Journal of the American Statistical Association, DOI: 10.1080/01621459.2023.2220170.
Hu, Y., & Huang, J. (2023). Delineating and comparing local labor market geographies of Millennials, Generation Xers, and Baby Boomers. Travel Behaviour and Society, 30, 325–334.
Jing, Y., Hu, Y., & Niedzielski, M. A. (2023). Neighborhood divides: Where you live matters for commuting and its efficiency. Cities, 132, 104091.
Han, Y., Hu, Y., Zhu, H., & Wang, F. (2023). A cyclically adjusted spatio-temporal kernel density estimation method for predictive crime hotspot analysis. Annals of GIS, 29(2), 177-191.
Hu, Y. (2022). The unequal commute: Comparing commuting patterns across income and racial worker subgroups. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 54(3), 437-440.
Jing, Y., & Hu, Y. (2022). The unequal commuting efficiency: A visual analytics approach. Journal of Transport Geography, 100, 103328.
Haider, Z., Hu, Y., Charkhgard, H., Himmelgreen, D., & Kwon, C. (2022). Creating grocery delivery hubs for food deserts at local convenience stores via spatial and temporal consolidation. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 82, 101301.
Luo, J., Hu, Y., Davids, K., Zhang, D., Gouin, C., Li, X., & Xu, X. (2022). Vision-based movement recognition reveals badminton player footwork using deep learning and binocular positioning. Heliyon, 8(8), e10089.
Bohnett, E., Vacca, R., Hu, Y., Hulse, D., & Varda, D. (2022). Resilience and fragmentation in healthcare coalitions: The link between resource contributions and centrality in health-related interorganizational networks. Social Networks, 71, 87-95.
Glover, B., Mao, L., Hu, Y., & Zhang, J. (2022). Enhancing the Retail Food Environment Index (RFEI) with Neighborhood Commuting Patterns: A Hybrid Human− Environment Measure. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(17), 10798.
Liu, Y., Ruiz-Menjivar, J., Hu, Y., Zavala, M., & Swisher, M. E. (2022). Knowledge Mapping of the Extant Literature on the Environmental Impacts of Using Cover Crops—A Scientometric Study. Environments, 9(9), 120.
Tanim, S. H., Wiernik, B. M., Reader, S., & Hu, Y. (2022). Predictors of hurricane evacuation decisions: A meta-analysis. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 79, 101742.
Hu, Y. & Li, X. (2021). Modeling and analysis of excess commuting with trip chains. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 111(6), 1851-1867.
Huang, J., Hu, Y., Wang, J., & Li, X. (2021). A tale of two cities: Jobs–housing balance and urban spatial structures from the perspective of transit commuters. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 48(6), 1543-1557.
Wang, D., White, J. R., Delaune, R. D., Yu, Z., & Hu, Y. (2021). Peripheral freshwater deltaic wetlands are hotspots of methane flux in the coastal zone. Science of The Total Environment, 775, 145784.
Zhang, F., Fan, Z., Kang, Y., Hu, Y., & Ratti, C. (2021). “Perception bias”: Deciphering a mismatch between urban crime and perception of safety. Landscape and Urban Planning, 207, 104003.
Mardini, M. T., Nerella, S., Kheirkhahan, M., Ranka, S., Fillingim, R. B., Hu, Y., … & Manini, T. M. (2021). The Temporal Relationship Between Ecological Pain and Life-Space Mobility in Older Adults With Knee Osteoarthritis: A Smartwatch-Based Demonstration Study. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 9(1), e19609.
Educational Background
- PhD in Geography, Louisiana State University, 2016
- M.S. in Cartography and GIS, East China Normal University, 2012
- B.S. in GIS, North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power, 2009
Current Graduate Students
Currently accepting applications for graduate students.