Yifan Yang | GeoAI and GIScience

About

I am a PhD student in the Department of Geography at Texas A&M University, where I work with Dr. Lei Zou on GeoAI, multimodal disaster assessment, and spatial intelligence. Before TAMU, I earned an M.S. in Spatial Data Science from the University of Southern California and a B.E. in Software Engineering from Hainan University.

My recent work spans bi-temporal street-view disaster assessment, multimodal arbitration with CLIP, satellite-to-street generative modeling, and multi-agent disaster reasoning. I am especially interested in systems that are explainable, reproducible, and useful for decision-making across hazard and resilience settings.

Vision: To transcend the boundaries of screens and make the real world our playground of intelligence, where AI, space, and humanity coexist and co-create.

Current Snapshot

Program: PhD in Geography, Texas A&M University
Previous training: USC Spatial Data Science, Hainan University Software Engineering
Current roles: Graduate Research Assistant, TAMIDS Student Ambassador, AAG student co-director
Open-source leadership: Founder of AutonomousGeoAI4Science

Research Interests

My research sits at the intersection of geographic information science, geospatial AI, multimodal foundation models, and disaster resilience.

GIScience GeoAI Disaster Resilience Responsible GeoAI Autonomous GeoAI Spatial Data Science Generative AI Multimodal AI Remote Sensing Street-View Analytics Vision-Language Models Cross-View Synthesis

Highlights

Research

Multimodal disaster intelligence

Developed a portfolio of research systems for hyperlocal damage assessment from bi-temporal street-view imagery, satellite inputs, and vision-language reasoning.

Recognition

Award-winning work

Received the ICC 2025 Best Student Paper Award, AAG-GISSG honors recognition, and multiple travel and scholarship awards supporting GeoAI research.

Service

Community leadership

Serving in student leadership roles across AAG and TAMIDS while organizing sessions on GeoAI, disaster resilience, and urban environmental intelligence.

Selected Publications

Representative papers and preprints spanning GeoAI, geoprivacy, multimodal disaster assessment, and urban digital twins.

2026

DamageArbiter: A CLIP-Enhanced Multimodal Arbitration Framework for Hurricane Damage Assessment from Street-View Imagery

Yifan Yang, Lei Zou, Wenjing Gong, Kun Fu, Zhenning Li, Sisi Wang, and collaborators

arXiv preprint, 2026.

arXiv Code
2026

Satellite-to-Street: Synthesizing Post-Disaster Views from Satellite Imagery via Generative Vision Models

Yifan Yang, Lei Zou, and William Jepson

arXiv preprint, 2026.

arXiv Code
2025

Hyperlocal Disaster Damage Assessment Using Bi-Temporal Street-View Imagery and Pre-Trained Vision Models

Yifan Yang, Lei Zou, Bing Zhou, Dongjie Li, Bowen Lin, Jasim Abedin, and Mingyang Yang

Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 2025.

DOI Code
2025

Perceiving Multidimensional Disaster Damages from Street-View Images Using Visual-Language Models

Yifan Yang and Lei Zou

Abstracts of the ICA, 2025. Best Student Paper Award.

DOI Code
2025

Object Detection and Segmentation of Trees Using Text SAM in ArcGIS Online

Yifan Yang and David Borrelli

In Security First: Geospatial Workflows for a Safe and Equitable World, Esri Press, 2025.

Project
2024

GeoLocator: A Location-Integrated Large Multimodal Model for Inferring Geo-Privacy

Yifan Yang, Sisi Wang, Dongjie Li, Shaoyang Sun, and Qunying Wu

Applied Sciences, 2024.

Paper Code

Presentations

Selected talks, paper sessions, and invited research presentations across GeoAI, GIScience, and disaster resilience communities.

Recent presentations span major meetings in GIScience, cartography, spatial data science, and GeoAI. Together they reflect a research trajectory centered on multimodal disaster assessment, geospatial intelligence, and community-facing scholarly engagement.

Years / Groups

Talks & Sessions

ICC 2025

Award Highlight

2026

Conference Portfolio

AAG Annual Meeting

San Francisco, California | March 17-21, 2026

A strong recent cluster of contributions centered on GeoAI, disaster resilience, and spatial intelligence communities.

Annual Meeting

Organized and contributed to multiple AAG 2026 sessions on GeoAI, disaster resilience, and spatial intelligence.

Session 90541 Session 24774 Session 25683 Session 25338
2025

Award-Winning Research

International Cartographic Conference (ICC)

Vancouver, Canada | August 17-22, 2025

A focused set of presentations around vision-language methods for multidimensional disaster damage assessment.

Student Paper Session

Perceiving Multidimensional Disaster Damages from Street-View Images Using Visual-Language Models

Yifan Yang

Best Student Paper Award

Pre-conference Symposium

DisasterVLP: A Vision-Language Pretrained Framework for Multidimensional Disaster Damage Assessment Using Street-View Images

Yifan Yang and Lei Zou

Symposium Page
2025

Conference Activity

AAG Annual Meeting

Detroit, Michigan | March 24-28, 2025

A multi-session conference presence spanning geoprivacy, multimodal spatial intelligence, and broader GeoAI themes.

Annual Meeting

Contributed presentations and sessions spanning GeoAI, geoprivacy, and multimodal spatial intelligence.

Session 23561 Session 82104 Session 83465
2024

Selected Talks

Selected Symposia and Summit Talks

Washington, DC, Los Angeles, and Virtual | 2024

A wider cross-section of workshop, symposium, and summit activity before the more concentrated conference portfolio in 2025-2026.

AAG Annual Meeting

Presented at the AAG Annual Meeting in Honolulu, Hawai'i.

Session 7825

Spatial Data Science Symposium

Geoprivacy Challenges and Solutions in the Digital Society

Session Details Watch Video

Pre-symposium Workshop

Spatiotemporal Data Science Symposium Training Workshop

Washington, DC | July 22, 2024

Event Page

AGI Leap Summit

Multimodality

Paper Presentation | SuperAGI | February 29, 2024

Summit Website

Los Angeles Geospatial Summit

2024 Los Angeles Geospatial Summit

Los Angeles, California | February 23, 2024

Event Article