A Preface of the 31st International Conference on Geoinformatics

1. Conference Overview

The International Conference on Geoinformatics is an official conference of the International Association of Chinese Professionals in Geographic Information Sciences (CPGIS) and has attracted not only CPGIS community members but also researchers, professionals, and students from broad communities. The conference is organized annually at different cities across the world, and as the organizers, we were happy to have the thirty-first conference held in Toronto this year.

The conference was co-organized by the International Association of Chinese Professionals in Geographic Information Sciences (CPGIS), Toronto Metropolitan University, the University of Toronto, and Queen’s University and hosted by Toronto Metropolitan University. Thanks are given to the following sponsors whose support made the conference financially possible:

• Geo Data Intelligence Corporation, New York, USA.
• Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada.
• ESRI Canada, Toronto, Canada.
• MDPI North America Office, Toronto, Canada.
• School of Resource and Environmental Science, Wuhan University, China.
• Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto, Canada.
• Applied Sciences journal, MDPI.

Finally, this conference’s success would not have been possible without the invaluable support of many individuals, especially Stephen Waldman, Douglas Huang, Heng Lee, Mariska Espinet, Suzanne Porter, and Wendy Xiong from Toronto Metropolitan University. We are also deeply grateful to the numerous student volunteers from Toronto Metropolitan University, the University of Toronto Mississauga, and Queen’s University, as well as all the committee members (listed in the Section 3) who contributed their time and effort. Special thanks also go to the program committee members for their dedication in reviewing abstracts and full papers.

2. Conference Sessions

The main theme of the conference was “Geospatial Sciences for Sustainability”. Under this theme, the objective of the conference was to offer an engaging platform for networking and exchanging new ideas and cutting-edge knowledge among diverse GIScience professionals worldwide, and to promote collaboration in geospatial science and sustainability.

In order to support the objective, sessions were organized under a number of streams that included but were not limited to the following:

• GIScience for smart and sustainable cities;
• Geospatial studies in food insecurity, malnutrition, and agriculture;
• GIS and remote sensing for monitoring environmental and climate change;
• GIS and remote sensing in watershed management;
• GIS and remote sensing for monitoring greenhouse gas emissions;
• Geospatial technology for public health and disease management;
• Geospatial information for climate action;
• Geospatial information for regional and global water cycles;
• Geospatial information for regional and global carbon cycles;
• Sustainable natural resource management across space;
• Geo-humanities and spatial inequality analysis;
• Big earth data in support of disaster assessment and management;
• Geospatial information sharing;
• Geospatial big data and GeoAI;
• Digital twins of the Earth and urban environments;
• Ground-based sensing networks;
• Advanced GIScience theory and method developments;
• Geoinformatics and education.

The conference program (Figure 1) offered 3 plenary and keynote sessions, 28 technical sessions, and 1 poster session. A variety of venues were arranged to share the conference contributions, including this conference proceedings.

3. Conference Committees

3.1. Conference Chairs

• Songnian Li, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada.
• Jing Ming Chen, University of Toronto, Canada.
• Hui Lin, CPGIS Honorary President.
• Min Chen, CPGIS President.

3.2. Local Organizing Committee (Members Are Listed in Alphabetical Order)

• Songnian Li, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada (Chair).
• Lu Wang, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada (Chair).
• Dongmei Chen, Queen’s University, Canada.
• Yuhong He, University of Toronto, Canada.
• Baoxin Hu, York University, Canada.
• Jane Liu, University of Toronto, Canada.
• Amaneh Jadidi Mardkheh, York University, Canada.
• Gopika Rajan, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada.
• Shahram Sattar, ESRI Canada, Canada.

3.3. Program Committee (Members Are Listed in Alphabetical Order)

• Yuhong He, University of Toronto, Canada (Chair).
• Dongmei Chen, Queen’s University, Canada (Chair).
• Maria Antonia Brovelli, Politecnico di Milano, Italy.
• Tao Cheng, University College London, UK.
• Serena Coetzee, University of Pretoria, South Africa.
• Anrong Dang, Tsinghua University, China.
• Suzana Dragicevic, Simon Fraser University, Canada.
• Song Gao, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.
• Zilong Zhong, McMaster University, Canada.
• Xulin Guo, University of Saskatchewan, Canada.
• Ivana Ivanova, Curtin University, Australia.
• Lan Mu, University of Georgia, USA.
• Wenmei Li, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China.
• Steve Liang, University of Calgary, Canada.
• Jane Liu, University of Toronto, Canada.
• Jiangui Liu, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Canada.
• Yu Liu, Peking University, China.
• Bing Lu, Simon Fraser University, Canada.
• Yongmei Lu, Texas State University, USA.
• Temitope Oluwadare, Queen’s University, Canada.
• Saied Pirasteh, Shaoxing University, China.
• John Rogan, Clark University, USA.
• Cheryl Rogers, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada.
• Michael Starek, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, USA.
• Jiali Shang, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Canada.
• Xun Shi, Dartmouth College, USA.
• Jinfei Wang, Western University, Canada.
• Jue Wang, University of Toronto, Canada.
• Xiaoyong Xu, University of Toronto, Canada.
• Xiang Ye, Shenzhen University, China.
• Hui Yang, China University of Mining and Technology, China.
• Wanhong Yang, University of Guelph, Canada.
• Benjamin Zhan, Texas State University, USA.
• Ying Zhang, Natural Resources Canada, Canada.
• Yuanzhi Zhang, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology.
• Daoye Zhu, University of Toronto, Canada.
• Tingting Zhu, University of Toronto, Canada.

3.4. International Steering Committee (Members Are Listed in Alphabetical Order)

• Guanhua Xu, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China (Chair).
• Deren Li, Wuhan University, China (Co-Chair).
• Jianya Gong, Wuhan University, China (Co-Chair).
• Huadong Guo, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China (Co-Chair).
• Jing Ming Chen, University of Toronto, Canada (Co-Chair).
• Luc Anselin, University of Chicago, USA.
• Yifang Ban, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.
• Shuming Bao, China Data Institute, USA.
• Michael Batty, Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London, UK.
• Jun Chen, National Geomatics Center, China.
• Christophe Claramunt, French Naval Academy Research Institute, France.
• David Coleman, University of New Brunswick, Canada.
• Stewart Fotheringham, Arizona State University, USA.
• Peng Gong, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
• Michael F. Goodchild, University of California at Santa Barbara, USA.
• Daniel Griffith, University of Texas at Dallas, USA.
• Qinghua Guo, Peking University, China.
• Renzhong Guo, Shenzhen University, China.
• Changchui He, The Academy of Digital China.
• Milan Konecny, Masaryk University, Czech.
• Mei-Po Kwan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China.
• Jonathan Li, University of Waterloo, Canada.
• Qingquan Li, Shenzhen University, China.
• Yaolin Liu, Wuhan University, China.
• Paul Longley, University College London, UK.
• Liqiu Meng, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany.
• Douglas Richardson, Harvard University, USA.
• Shih-Lung Shaw, University of Tennessee, USA.
• Daniel Sui, University of Arkansas, USA.
• Vincent Tao, Wayz.ai, China.
• Vladimir Tikunov, Moscow State University, Russia.
• Fahui Wang, Louisiana State University, USA.
• Shaowen Wang, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.
• Wanlin Yan, Keio University, Japan.
• Anthony Yeh, University of Hong Kong, China.
• Chenghu Zhou, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.
• A-Xing Zhu, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.