Brain to Society: Decision and Behavior Seminar Series with Dr. Raja Sengupta
Geospatial Technologies for Decision Environments: Current and Future Opportunities
Dr. Raja Sengupta
Associate Professor of Geography & School of Environment, McGill University
Raja Sengupta, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Geography & School of Environment, McGill University. His research interests center on Geographic Information Science (GIScience), and include Agent-Based Models (ABMs) and computational aspects surrounding the implementation of these models to understand both social and technology related issues. Recently, he has begun to look at how machine learning techniques can inform rule-generation for ABMs.
Another aspect of his research looks at the emerging Smart Cities debate. Current projects in this area look at spatio-temporal variations in Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect through the use of a large network of low cost sensors. In the past, he has applied ABMs and advanced Geospatial techniques to study issues related to Spatial Epidemiology, Landuse-Landcover Change, Payment for Environmental Services/Conservation Payments and Water Resources Management.
He is a Topic Editor for the ISPRS International Journal of Geoinformation, and an Editorial Board Member of Water International. He also is a review committee member for the GIScience, Spatial Knowledge and Information-Canada, and GEOProcessing conference series.
About the presentation
This talk will cover the wide range of Geospatial technologies that exist to provide decision support for health management, understanding human interactions with biodiversity, and to reduce human-animal conflicts in national parks in order to manage emerging infectious diseases. These technologies include Location Allocation modelling, Geographically Weighted Regressions, and Agent-Based Models. Overall, the talk will provide an overview of toolkits that can be used by decision-makers to look at problems with a spatial perspective, and understand the unique geospatial environments within which these decisions have to be made. In particular, human-environment interactions that occur within this spatial framework is highlighted..
Panel Discussion: Following the seminar, there will be a panel of disciplinary scientists from neuroscience, management, economics, and computational sciences. The moderator is Prof. Laurette Dubé, Chair and Scientific Director, McGill Centre for the Convergence of Health and Economics (MCCHE).