Introduction
Dr. Rui Cao is an Assistant Professor at the Thrust of Urban Governance and Design, Society Hub, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) where he leads the RUI (Responsible Urban Intelligence) Lab . His research integrates geospatial AI (GeoAI), spatial intelligence, and urban informatics to understand complex urban systems and foster more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable urban futures.
HKUST(GZ) Homepage | RUI Lab | Google Scholar | ResearchGate | Email
Join Us
[***📢] We have opportunities for Postdoc, PhD, MPhil, RA, Visiting Scholar positions at the RUI Lab . We welcome motivated students and researchers to join us.
News
- September 2026: Our new paper “Unveiling inequalities in forgotten enclaves: A geospatial–streetscape integrated framework for assessing urban village livability ” has been accepted by Cities .
- August 2026: Our project on complex road network generation was awarded funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) .
- August 2026: Our new paper “A novel simulation-based approach to optimizing road networks for disaster evacuation in dense urban informal settlements ” has been accepted by Computers, Environment and Urban Systems .
- August 2026: Dr. Cao hosted a poster session on “Urban Spatial Intelligence, Multimodal Models and Agents” at The 4th International Conference on Urban Science and Intelligence , Guangzhou, China.
- July 2026: Our new paper “Coupled density-hazard navigation for evacuation reliability in dense urban informal settlements ” has been accepted by Reliability Engineering & System Safety .
- July 2026: Our project on urban disaster digital twin was awarded funding from the Guangzhou Municipal Education Bureau .
- July 2026: Dr. Cao co-hosted a Symposium on GeoAI for Sustainable Cities in the Global South — Data, Intelligence, and Interdisciplinary Perspectives , Guangzhou, China.
- June 2026: As a member of the UGOD Africa Delegation , Dr. Cao visited Egypt, Kenya, and Tanzania, engaging in academic exchanges with local universities and research institutions, and visiting Chinese embassies and United Nations.
- April 2026: Dr. Cao co-hosted a special session on “Spatial Data Intelligence and Sustainable Development” at SpatialDI 2026 , Changsha, China.
- April 2026: Dr. Cao hosted a special session on “Human–Machine Symbiotic Society” at CAAI Strategic Symposium on Interdisciplinary Research in Social Computing and Social Intelligence , Guangzhou, China.
- January 2026: Our new paper “GeoMarX: Empowering geospatial marking and annotation for complex targets in urban environments ” has been accepted by Urban Informatics .
- December 2025: Dr. Cao delivered a keynote speech “Mapping the Unseen: GeoAI-Empowered Spatial Sensing and Analytics for Urban Informal Settlements in China” at the International Conference on Social Computing (ICSC 2025) in Shanghai, China.
- December 2025: Our paper “Mapping the vanishing and transformation of urban villages in China ” has been covered by major media outlets including Xinhua News , China Daily , etc.