Xianghui Zhang
London, United Kingdom
Xianghui Zhang

I combine large-scale inidvidual mobile-phone data, electronic health records, and spatial data science to study sustainable mobility, environmental health, and policy intervention, generating evidence for more sustainable, equitable, and healthy cities.

  1. Research Associate in Health & Inequalities, University of Liverpool · 2025–present
  2. Honorary Researcher, NHS Cheshire & Merseyside · 2025–present

About

My research connects how people move through cities to questions of fairness, environment, and health. Across three strands, I study sustainable mobility and transport equity, multimodal transport system and adaptation, and environmental exposure and health inequalities, asking not only how cities move, but who gains and who is left behind.

I develop methods in spatial data science, machine learning, and GIS that turn anonymised individual mobile-phone trajectories and large-scale electronic health records into evidence at the level of individual people, streets, and neighbourhoods. This work has informed the UK Department for Transport, Transport for London, the Greater London Authority, Ordnance Survey, and the NHS, supporting sustainable transport policy, infrastructure resilience, and public health.

Previous experience

Nov 2025 to Aug 2026
Associate Lecturer (Teaching) in GeoAI
University College London
Jun to Nov 2025
Visiting Lecturer
University College London
Nov 2023 to Feb 2025
Research Assistant in Multimodal Mobility
University College London
2023
PhD Research Intern
Department for Transport, highly commended (impact statement)

Education

2020 to 2025
PhD, Geographic Information Science
University College London, SpaceTimeLab
2016 to 2019
MSc, Land Use Management
Wuhan University, Distinction (top 1%)
2012 to 2016
BSc, Land Use Management
Nanjing Agricultural University, First Class (top 5%)

Awards & honours

2024
Best Paper nomination, NetMob 2024
2024
Best Presentation Award, ABCP 2024
2019
Outstanding Graduate, Wuhan University
2018
Outstanding Student, Wuhan University
2018
Chinese National Scholarship
2016, 2018
Wuhan University Scholarship
2016
Outstanding Graduate, Nanjing Agricultural University
2013, 2015
Nanjing Agricultural University Scholarship

Certifications

2026 (exp.)
Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
2025
Accredited Researcher, Office for National Statistics

Skills & tools

PythonPyTorchscikit-learnR PostgreSQLAWSArcGISQGIS GeoDaGephiTableauEHR linkage

Research

develop data-driven approaches that combine geographic information science, urban analytics, network science, machine learning, and causal inference to understand how people move through cities and how these mobility patterns shape environmental exposures and health outcomes. Leveraging large-scale mobile-phone data and electronic health records, my research advances knowledge on transport equity, multimodal mobility, environmental exposure, and population health. This work is structured around three interconnected research themes. Click any theme to explore further.

Thread 01

Sustainable mobility and transport equity

Evaluating how transport interventions reshape mobility patterns within intervention areas and across the wider transport system and who benefits from these changes.
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I combine mobile-phone GPS data with causal inference methods to evaluate transport and place-based interventions across multiple spatial scales. By examining impacts both within intervention areas and across the wider transport network, and by distinguishing between residents, visitors, and pass-through travellers, I reveal who benefits, who is disadvantaged, and how effects are distributed across populations and places.

Selected Project
  • Transport for London, Evaluating the mobility and distributional impacts of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods using individual-level mobility data.
  • Greater London Authority, Analysing group footfall dynamics and mobility patterns during major events and public-space interventions.
Featured work
A framework that pairs mobile-phone GPS data with causal inference to evaluate local-area interventions across travel modes and population groups, applied to a cluster of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in north-east London.
The three population groups in a local-area transport intervention: residents, non-residents with trip attractions, and pass-through drivers
The three population groups an equitable evaluation must separate: residents, non-residents with trip attractions, and pass-through drivers. Source: Zhang et al., 2026, Transportation Research Part A (CC BY-NC-ND).
Thread 02

Multimodal transport systems and adaptation

Reconstructing how entire cities move and adapt across transport modes, from everyday travel to major disruptions.
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I develop artificial intelligence and GIS methods that transform anonymised mobile-phone trajectories into mode-specific, street-level flow estimates across walking, cycling, bus, rail, and car networks. By linking these flows into a city-wide mobility system, I study how people and transport networks respond to short- and long-term disruptions, informing applications in transport planning, resilience, routing, and decarbonisation

Selected Project
  • Ordnance Survey, Multimodal Routing Network enhancement
  • Transport for London, RoadLab 2 real-time driving and walking flows
  • Department for Transport, Travel behaviour adaptation during extreme weather
Featured work
A framework that transforms individual mobile-phone trajectories into mode-specific, network-level flows across walking, cycling, bus, rail, and car, linking individual travel behaviour to the performance of the whole urban transport system.
Daily street-level car, walk, cycle, and bus traffic flows across London from mobile-phone data
Daily street-level multimodal traffic flows across London (car, walk, cycle, and bus), reconstructed from individual mobile-phone data. Source: own work.
Thread 03

Environmental exposure and health inequalities

Understanding how dynamic environmental exposures shape health and health inequalities across populations and places.
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I develop dynamic measures of exposure to green space, blue space, air pollution, and the built environment by integrating mobility data and large-scale NHS electronic health records. My research examines how environmental and mobility-related exposures influence mental and physical health throughout daily life, generating evidence to support healthier, more equitable cities and communities.

Selected Project
  • GroundsWell, green and blue space for mental health
  • Data-HEART, North West environmental data asset
Featured work
Integrating mobile phone mobility data, environmental indicators, and NHS health records to reveal how green space accessibility and utilisation independently contribute to better mental health, with active engagement playing a particularly important role in nature-deprived communities.
Framework linking green-space accessibility and utilisation to common mental disorder outcomes
How green-space accessibility (tree visibility, canopy, and distance) and utilisation (visit frequency, stay duration, and physical activity), measured from remote sensing and anonymised mobile-phone data, relate to common mental disorder (CMD) outcomes in NHS electronic health records. Source: own work, GroundsWell.

Projects & grants

Principal investigator
Data-HEART (North West Household Environmental Asset for Regional Transformation)2026 to present
Principal Investigator · NHS North West Secure Data Environment, Data Accelerator Fund for Novel and Emerging Assets (DAFNEA) £36,353.76
Building a regional household-level environmental data asset for the North West within the NHS Secure Data Environment, linking environmental exposures to population and health data to enable research on environment, health inequality, and regional transformation.
Co-investigator
Multimodal Routing Network EnhancementOct 2024 to Dec 2025
Co-Investigator (PI: Prof. Tao Cheng) · Ordnance Survey £60,000
Integrating anonymised mobile-phone trajectories with the Ordnance Survey Multimodal Routing Network to infer mode-specific flows, and demonstrating how behavioural mobility data can enrich Great Britain's national transport-infrastructure datasets.
iMobility: Multi-Mode Mobility Monitoring and Analysis using Mobile GPS DataFeb 2024 to Feb 2025
Co-Investigator · Transport for London, RoadLab 2 Innovation Challenge £20,000
Generating near-real-time pedestrian and cyclist origin to destination flows and routes on Transport for London networks, validated against traffic counts and Vivacity cameras, to support cycling routing in the TfL Go app.
Researcher & contributor
GroundsWell: Community-engaged and Data-informed Systems Transformation of Urban Green and Blue Space for Population HealthFeb 2025 to present
Research Associate (Co-I: Prof. Mark Green) · UK Prevention Research Partnership
Developing dynamic metrics of access to and exposure to urban green and blue space, and conducting large-scale population-health analysis on NHS electronic health records via the CIPHA platform, linking environmental exposure to mental-health diagnoses and chronic-disease outcomes, and co-producing actionable insights with NHS partners and stakeholders such as The Mersey Forest.
Improving Flood-Disrupted Road Network Resilience with Dynamic People-Centric Digital TwinsMay 2024 to Feb 2025
Research Assistant (Co-I: Prof. Tao Cheng) · Data & Analytics Facility for National Infrastructures (DAFNI)
Developing hourly multimodal traffic-flow data across multi-layer London transport networks to power a people-centred digital-twin system, modelling cascading infrastructure vulnerability during urban flooding and linking flood-hazard modelling to dynamic population exposure and transport-system performance.
Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 and Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions on Mobility and Places in SingaporeNov 2023 to Feb 2025
Research Assistant (PI: Prof. Tao Cheng) · Alan Turing Institute
Adapting and testing the scalability of London-developed travel-mode detection for Singapore, designing the EcoTravel mobile app to collect labelled GPS training data, and building multi-year multimodal mobility datasets to evaluate travel behaviour, activity change, and the optimisation of non-pharmaceutical interventions.
Evaluating the Impacts of Low Traffic Neighbourhood Schemes on Transport System Operation and Travel BehaviourDec 2020 to Apr 2024
Research Assistant · Transport for London
Developing a machine-learning and GIS travel-mode detection algorithm classifying seven modes (car, bus, train, tube, cycle, walk, stationary) from mobile-phone data, producing London-wide multimodal mobility datasets from 2019 onward, and evaluating the short- and long-term effects of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods on the transport system and travel behaviour.
Travel-Behaviour Adaptation during Extreme-Weather EventsJun 2023 to Sep 2023
PhD Research Intern · Department for Transport (Advanced Analytics)
Independent analysis of how heatwaves and storm disruption reshape travel behaviour, accessibility, and system performance using large-scale national mobile-phone data, delivering evidence for national transport-resilience planning and comparing theoretical with actual transport connectivity.
Monitoring the Footfall of Multiple Groups and Their Responses to Special Events in LondonJun 2022 to Dec 2022
Research Assistant · Greater London Authority
Inferring home, workplace, and visited locations from mobile-phone data, generating and validating group-level hourly footfall datasets, and analysing footfall responses to events including tube strikes and the Queen's lying-in-state queue on the South Bank.
Multiscale Clustering Knowledge Mining and ApplicationsSep 2017 to Apr 2019
Research Assistant (PI: Prof. Yaolin Liu) · National Natural Science Foundation of China
Using remote-sensing and nighttime-light data to extract human activity, measuring types of urban land expansion, and analysing the spatiotemporal coupling of urban expansion, industrial structure, and regional integration across the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

Publications

Published, peer-reviewed work and conference presentations. Full list and citations on Google Scholar  ↗

Editorial
2026
Guest Editor, special issue "Equitable Geospatial Intelligence: Spatio-Temporal Perspectives on Social Equity and Well-Being"
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information
Selected journal articles
2026
Zhang, X., Jones, P., Emmonds, A., Cheng, T.
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 211, 105047
2025
Cheng, T., Ozkan, M., Fang, M., Zhang, X.
IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems
2025
Cheng, T., Chen, H., Zhang, X., Gao, X., Yin, L., Jiao, J.
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-InformationCover featured
2023
Jiang, X., Zhuang, D., Zhang, X., Chen, H., Luo, J., Gao, X.
CIKM 2023, 32nd ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management
2022
Cheng, T., Liu, J., Liu, Y., Zhang, X., Gao, X.
Primary Health Care Research and Development, 23
2021
Cheng, T., Lu, T., Liu, Y., Gao, X., Zhang, X.
Computational Urban Science, 1(1), 1 to 19
2020
Liu, Y., Zhang, X.*, Pan, X., Ma, X., Tang, M.
Cities, 104, 102801ESI Highly CitedCorresponding author
2018
Liu, Y., Zhang, X.*, Kong, X., Wang, R., Chen, L.
Applied Geography, 94, 163 to 177Corresponding author
Invited talks
2026
Invited Speaker, Where Does London End? Workshop
Talk: The Impact of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in London
Birkbeck, University of London · London, UK · 11 June 2026
2026
Invited Speaker, LSE Transport Workshop: Data Science and AI for London's Transport System
Talk: Leveraging Mobile Phone Application Data for Multimodal Mobility: From Individual Behaviour Understanding to System Performance Monitoring
London School of Economics and Political Science · London, UK · 14 Apr 2026
Conference presentations
2026
Uncovering the mechanisms linking green-space accessibility and utilisation to common mental-health diagnoses
Zhang, X.
AAG 2026, American Association of Geographers · San Francisco, USA · 16 to 21 Mar 2026
2025
Uncovering the mechanisms linking green-space accessibility and utilisation to common mental-health diagnoses
Zhang, X.
SDSS 2025, 6th Spatial Data Science Symposium · Online · 5 Dec 2025
2025
GroundsWell: green space for health, people, place, and policy in action
Rogers, S., Zhang, X.
British Science Festival 2025 · Liverpool, UK · 11 Sep 2025
2024
Evaluating local transport interventions to promote sustainable mobility
Zhang, X., Jones, P., Emmonds, A., Cheng, T.
NetMob 2024 · Washington DC, USA · 7 to 9 Oct 2024Best Paper nominee
2024
Population-wide behavioural changes under the UK's Low Traffic Neighbourhood schemes
Zhang, X., Jones, P., Emmonds, A., Cheng, T.
ABCP 2024 · Leicester, UK · 5 Jul 2024Best Presentation
2024
Evaluating transport intervention in sustainable mobility: the Low Traffic Neighbourhood schemes in London
Zhang, X., Jones, P., Emmonds, A., Cheng, T.
AAG 2024 · Honolulu, USA · 16 to 20 Apr 2024
2024
Calibrating driving-flow data through the integration of big and small data: the graph transformer network approach
Chen, H., Zhang, X., Gao, X., Cheng, T.
AAG 2024 · Honolulu, USA · 16 to 20 Apr 2024
2023
Unlocking the power of mobile-phone application data to accelerate transport decarbonisation
Zhang, X., Cheng, T.
GIScience 2023 · Leeds, UK · 12 to 16 Sep 2023
2023
The ups and downs of London high streets throughout the COVID-19 pandemic: footfall-based clustering
Wang, X., Zhang, X., Cheng, T.
GIScience 2023 · Leeds, UK · 12 to 16 Sep 2023
2023
Deriving multimodal road-transport greenhouse-gas emissions from mobile-phone GPS datasets
Zhang, X., Cheng, T.
Geoinformatics 2023 · London, UK · 19 to 21 Jul 2023
2023
Examining the recovery of high streets with footfall as the performance measure
Wang, X., Zhang, X., Cheng, T.
Geoinformatics 2023 · London, UK · 19 to 21 Jul 2023
2023
Customer profiling based on mobile-app GPS data: a case study on Westfield shopping malls
Zhou, F., Zhang, X., Wang, X., Cheng, T.
Geoinformatics 2023 · London, UK · 19 to 21 Jul 2023
2023
The influence of Low Traffic Neighbourhood schemes on multimodal traffic flow in London
Zhang, X., Cheng, T.
GISRUK 2023 · Glasgow, UK · 18 to 21 Apr 2023

Teaching

Teaching and supervision across foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, including lectures, practical labs, assessment and feedback, dissertation supervision, personal tutoring, and curriculum development. Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) expected June 2026.

Associate Lecturer (Teaching) in GeoAI, UCLNov 2025 to Aug 2026
CEGE0096
Geospatial Programming
Core, MSc Geospatial Sciences, Term 1, about 45 students
CEGE0042
Spatio-Temporal Analysis & Data Mining
Core, MSc Spatio-Temporal Analytics and Big Data Mining, Term 2, about 45 students
Postgraduate Teaching Assistant, King's College LondonSep 2023 to Jun 2024
7CUSMIUA
Introduction to Urban Analytics
Core, MSc Urban Informatics
7CUSMSDA
Spatial Data Analysis
Core, MSc Urban Informatics
0CCS0CSE
Introduction to Computer Science
Foundation students, undergraduate Computer Science programme
Guest Teacher, London School of Economics and Political ScienceFeb 2023 to Jun 2023
DS105L
Data for Data Science
BSc Politics and Data Science
DS202
Data Science for Social Scientists
BSc Politics and Data Science, BSc Psychological and Behavioural Science
Postgraduate Teaching Assistant, UCLSep 2022 to Jun 2023
CEGE0097
Spatial Analysis & Geocomputation
Core, MSc Geospatial Sciences and MSc Spatio-Temporal Analytics
CEGE0042
Spatio-Temporal Data Analysis & Data Mining
Core, MSc Geospatial Sciences and MSc Spatio-Temporal Analytics
Personal tutoring, UCL2025 to 2026

Personal tutor to 5 MSc students, providing academic guidance and pastoral support.

MSc dissertation supervision, UCLproject, year, programme
2025–26
Mapping private-garden greenness via multi-modal fusion and foundation models
MSc Spatio-Temporal Analytics and Big Data Mining
2024–25
Walking-related air-pollution exposure and health inequalities in London
MSc Spatio-Temporal Analytics and Big Data Mining, Distinction
2022–23
Modal shifting and road-transport resilience under tube strikes
MSc Spatio-Temporal Analytics and Big Data Mining, Distinction
2022–23
Validation and calibration of driving-flow data from big and small data
MSc Spatio-Temporal Analytics and Big Data Mining
2021–22
Spatial distribution of multimodal-transport greenhouse-gas emissions in London
MSc Spatio-Temporal Analytics and Big Data Mining, Distinction
2020–21
Multimodal traffic flows in London's new Low Traffic Neighbourhoods
MSc Geospatial Sciences

Also active in PhD supervision panels and mentoring junior researchers at UCL SpaceTimeLab.

Service & outreach

Journal reviewing

npj Sustainable Mobility and TransportApplied GeographyAnnals of GIS EPJ Data ScienceScientific DataSpatial Economic Analysis Evaluation ReviewInternational Journal of Urban SciencesJournal of Advanced Transportation The Annals of Regional ScienceApplied Spatial Analysis and Policy

Outreach, demonstrations & organising

Session chair, Five-minute presentations of young investigators
International Summer School on Environmental and Planetary Health · Paris · Jun 2026
Demonstration Lead, EcoTravel: a beacon for sustainable commuting
AI UK 2024 · London · Mar 2024
Demonstration Lead, EcoTravel mobile app for Scope 3 reporting
Transport AI 2024 · Manchester · Jan 2024
Organiser, Workshop on Deep Learning for Urban Analytics
GIScience 2023 · Leeds · Sep 2023
Demonstration Lead, SpaceTimeAI for smart urban mobility
AI UK 2023 · London · Mar 2023
Volunteer, 30th International Conference on Geoinformatics
London · Jul 2023