Conference Programme

Event information posted here is subject to change depending on the requirements of the conference. If changes do occur, we will email all attendees, and disruption to talk times will be minimised.

Programme at a glance

Unless otherwise stated, all rooms are in the Old Engineering Building (Y3).

Event Time Room
Tuesday
Welcome & networking lunch 12:30 - 13:30  G43 
Welcome talk and icebreaker 13:30 - 13:45  G26 
Workshop session supported by Imago: Inequalites from Space 13:45 - 15:45 G26 
Break (Tea/Coffee) 15:45 - 16:00  G43
Presentations and Q&A: GIS and careers 16:00 – 17:15  G26 
Close 17:15-17:30 G26 
Social  18:30 - late Alfred Works
Wednesday
Early Career event - How to survive a conference! 10:30 - 11:00 G26
Early Career event - Local Committee tour of campus (weather permitting) and networking 11:00 - 12:00 G26
Main Conference Registration + Lunch  12:00 – 13:00  G43
GISRUK Open and Keynote: Ed Parsons: An Adventure in Space and Time - Observations from the intersection of industry and academia 13:00 - 14:00 G31
GISRUK 2026 Host presentation 14:00 - 15:00 G31
Break (Tea/Coffee) 15:00 – 15:20  G43
Parallel Sessions 1 15:20 – 17:00  G31, G26
Evening Social  17:00  New Engineering Building (Y8)
Thursday
Arrival & networking (Tea/Coffee) 9:00 - 9:30  G43
Parallel Sessions 2 9:30 - 11:10  G31, G26, G34
Poster Session 1 and Break (Tea/Coffee) 11:10 – 11:40  G43, G36
Keynote: Gemma Davies and Claudia Offner, MapAction: Maps in Action - From Disaster Response to Local Capacity 11:40 – 12:40  G31
Lunch 12:40 – 13:40  G43
Parallel Sessions 3 13:40 – 15:00  G31, G26, G34
Poster Session 2 and Break (Tea/Coffee)  15:00 – 15:40  G43, G36
Parallel Sessions 4 15:40 – 16:40  G31, G26, G34
Conference Dinner 19:00 - 21:30 The Exchange
Friday
Arrival & networking (Tea/Coffee) 9:00 - 9:30  G43
Parallel Sessions 5 9:30 – 10:50  G31, G26
Break (Tea/Coffee) 10:50 – 11:10  G43
Parallel Sessions 6 11:10 – 12:10  G31, G26
GISRUK Close 12:10 – 13:00  G31 
Takeaway lunch 13:00 G43

All Sessions

Session Room Chair
Group 1 - Wednesday 15th April - 15:20 - 17:00
1A: Deprivation & Cost-of-Living Geographies G31 Jessica Hepburn
1B: Climatic Change G26 Craig Robson
Group 2 - Thursday 16th April - 9:30 - 11:10
2A: Urban Green Space G31 Naya Desai and Shukurat Bankole
2B: Cycling & Mobility G26 Simon Blainey
2C: Methodological Innovations in GIS G34 Nick Bearman
Group 3 - Thursday 16th April - 13:40 - 15:00
3A: Environmental Risk Management G31 Daniel Donaldson
3B: Street-Level Imagery & Visual Impact G26 Fulvio Lopane
3C: Cultural Heritage & Land Use Change G34 Guy Solomon
Group 4 - Thursday 16th April - 15:40 - 16:40
4A: GIS for Public Services G31 Vikki Houlden
4B: Housing & Urban Planning G26 Sarah Greenham
4C: Urban Economics G34 Ross Bangs and Emma Ferranti
Group 5 - Friday 17th April - 9:30 - 10:50
5A: Urban Transport Design G31 Chen Zhong
5B: Geospatial Healthcare Analysis G26 Duncan Whyatt
Group 6 - Friday 17th April - 11:10 - 12:10
6A: People & Population G31 Samantha Cockings
6B: AI & Data Processing G26 Stef De Sabbata

All Talks

GISRUK 2026 Proceedings on Zenodo - you can find all of the proceedings for the talks and posters available on the GISRUK 2026 community on Zenodo link. Each individual paper in the session list below is linked directly to the corresponding resource on Zenodo.

Parallel Session Speaker Talk Title
Session 1
1A: Deprivation & Cost-of-Living Geographies (Chaired by Jess Hepburn) Luc Wilson* Scale, Salience, and Hardship: A Comparison of the IMD and Open Banking Data
1A: Deprivation & Cost-of-Living Geographies (Chaired by Jess Hepburn) Alex Singleton Measuring Cash and Banking Access Vulnerability: A Composite Small-Area Index Integrating Infrastructure and Population Characteristics
1A: Deprivation & Cost-of-Living Geographies (Chaired by Jess Hepburn) Huanfa Chen How far are we from keeping everyone warm in cost-of-living crisis? Measuring geographic accessibility to UK warm spaces
1A: Deprivation & Cost-of-Living Geographies (Chaired by Jess Hepburn) Amir Baniasadi Unequal Heat Exposure across Wales: A Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Socioeconomic Deprivation
1A: Deprivation & Cost-of-Living Geographies (Chaired by Jess Hepburn) Johara Meyer* Towards a Dynamic View of UK Deprivation: Harmonising the IMD Using Claimant Count Data
1B: Climatic Change (Chaired by Craig Robson) Pengyuan Liu Dealing with Spatial Heterogeneity: A Graph Neural Network-based Domain Adaptation Framework in Urban Heat Prediction
1B: Climatic Change (Chaired by Craig Robson) Dongyi Ma* Measuring Urban Heat Island Intensity in London During the Warmest June on Record
1B: Climatic Change (Chaired by Craig Robson) Chris Brunsdon The Science of the Seasons - Spatial Analysis of Phenological Data
1B: Climatic Change (Chaired by Craig Robson) Yanzhi Lu* Neighbourhood-scale Urban Heat Island Modelling Using ADMS-Urban Climate Model
1B: Climatic Change (Chaired by Craig Robson) Giandomenico Vurro How Temperature Datasets Shape Spatial Heat Vulnerability: Observations versus Urban Climate Modelling
Session 2
2A: Urban Green Space (Chaired by Naya Desai and Shukurat Bankole) Fran Pontin Towards More Equitable Parks: A Reproducible Catchment Modelling Approach
2A: Urban Green Space (Chaired by Naya Desai and Shukurat Bankole) Vikki Houlden Unequal Paths to Nature: Barriers to Greenspace Access in West Yorkshire
2A: Urban Green Space (Chaired by Naya Desai and Shukurat Bankole) Youlong Gu* Assessing Park Satisfaction from Google Maps Reviews: Novel Evidence from Multimodal Text–Image Analysis
2A: Urban Green Space (Chaired by Naya Desai and Shukurat Bankole) Andrew Schendl* Planning for More-than-Human Waterfronts: GIS-Based Habitat Suitability Modelling of Urban Kittiwake Nesting on the River Tyne
2A: Urban Green Space (Chaired by Naya Desai and Shukurat Bankole) Luning Li Building Scalable Nature-Use Indicators for Thriving Cities: Modelling Demand for Park Quality using Mobile Phone App Data
2B: Cycling & Mobility (Chaired by Simon Blainey) Michael Szell Quality assessment of a country-wide bicycle node network with loop census analysis
2B: Cycling & Mobility (Chaired by Simon Blainey) Yanjie Lu* Transport Equity in Dockless Bike-Sharing: Behavioral Clustering and Socioeconomic Patterns in Shenzhen
2B: Cycling & Mobility (Chaired by Simon Blainey) Manuel Knepper BikeNetKit: Developing an open-source bicycle network software suite for urban planners
2B: Cycling & Mobility (Chaired by Simon Blainey) Chenrui Xiao Wheely Easy: Creating a Wheelability Network for Bradford
2B: Cycling & Mobility (Chaired by Simon Blainey) Chris Larkin* Implementing low traffic neighbourhoods to the expansion of cycle networks
2C: Methodological Innovations in GIS (Chaired by Nick Bearman) René Westerholt A novel cluster plot for the visual characterisation of irregular spatial hotspots and coldspots
2C: Methodological Innovations in GIS (Chaired by Nick Bearman) Sheng Zhou OR4NN: Preprocess for Scalable K Nearest Neighbour Join
2C: Methodological Innovations in GIS (Chaired by Nick Bearman) Martin Fleischmann gwlearn - An Agnostic Framework for Geographically Weighted Learning
2C: Methodological Innovations in GIS (Chaired by Nick Bearman) Sui Zhang* From Optimal to Actionable: Reconciling Spatial Process Heterogeneity with Administrative Boundaries via Regularised Spatial Regimes Learner (RSRL)
2C: Methodological Innovations in GIS (Chaired by Nick Bearman) Krasen Samardzhiev Spatial modelling of morphological phenomena with taxonometric relationships using sub-optimal datasets
Session 3
3A: Environmental Risk Management (Chaired by Daniel Donaldson) Rachel Doley* A Transferable Framework for Mapping Natural Hazard Occurrence and Impacts from News Media Sources
3A: Environmental Risk Management (Chaired by Daniel Donaldson) Jacob Macdonald Coastal Proximity and the ‘Shared Risk Identity’: Mapping Willingness to Pay for Flood Protection in Mozambique
3A: Environmental Risk Management (Chaired by Daniel Donaldson) Kirsty Watkinson Fuzzy random forests: A new approach to groundwater contaminant modelling in Uganda
3A: Environmental Risk Management (Chaired by Daniel Donaldson) Naya Desai* Unsupervised Detection of Urban Drought: a Comparative Analysis in a Data-Limited Setting
3B: Street-Level Imagery & Visual Impact (Chaired by Fluvio Lopane) Haixiao Liu* Retail Façade Change Detection via Street-level Imagery
3B: Street-Level Imagery & Visual Impact (Chaired by Fluvio Lopane) Mairead de Roiste Seeing is Believing: Using Visual Impact and Human Movement Data to Guide Wetland Restoration in the Ruamāhanga Basin, Aotearoa New Zealand
3B: Street-Level Imagery & Visual Impact (Chaired by Fluvio Lopane) Ilya Ilyankou* StreetVibes: An Open, Modular Pipeline for Reproducible Street-Level Urban Perception Analysis
3B: Street-Level Imagery & Visual Impact (Chaired by Fluvio Lopane) Yujun Hou* Seeing Accessibility: A Vision–Language Approach to Disability-Related Spatial Inequality from Street View Imagery
3C: Cultural Heritage & Land Use Change (Chaired by Guy Solomon) Michael Xiao* Reprinting and Linking the Past: Creating a Nationwide Georeferenced Directory of Fixed-Line Telephone Subscribers, 1881-1984
3C: Cultural Heritage & Land Use Change (Chaired by Guy Solomon) Tong He* Solar Power at Scale: Quantifying Land Use Change Across China from 2010 to 2024
3C: Cultural Heritage & Land Use Change (Chaired by Guy Solomon) Petrus Gerrits Mapping Heritage in South Asia: A Multi-Source Geospatial Framework for Spatially Explicit Documentation of Archaeological Sites using Machine Learning and Open-Source Data Platform (Arches)
3C: Cultural Heritage & Land Use Change (Chaired by Guy Solomon) Charlotte Evans GIS in Interdisciplinary Research: Colonial Irrigation Policy and Landscape Change in 19th and 20th C. India
Session 4
4A: GIS for Public Services (Chaired by Vikki Houlden) Jessica Hepburn Using geospatial intelligence to aid regional decision making and information dissemination in a Combined Authority
4A: GIS for Public Services (Chaired by Vikki Houlden) Yuxin Zhao* Optimising Fire Station Layouts to Improve Fire Service Efficiency: A Spatial Machine Learning and Genetic Algorithm Approach
4A: GIS for Public Services (Chaired by Vikki Houlden) Shitian Zhang* Enhancing Emergency Response Efficiency: A Geospatial Machine Learning Approach to Predicting False Fire Alarms in the West Midlands
4B: Housing & Urban Planning (Chaired by Sarah Greenham) Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum Housing associations as the new Great Estates: Uncovering corporate landownership in London
4B: Housing & Urban Planning (Chaired by Sarah Greenham) Richard Kingston Unsuitable by Design? Geospatial Evaluation of England’s New Town Proposals
4B: Housing & Urban Planning (Chaired by Sarah Greenham) Beatrice Taylor Not in My Backyard: Topics of Objection in Housing Development
4C: Urban Economics (Chaired by Ross Bangs and Emma Ferranti) Sayan Roy* Do environmental amenities add a premium to property prices?Evidence from Bengaluru
4C: Urban Economics (Chaired by Ross Bangs and Emma Ferranti) Zihan Yin Open Retail Centre Boundaries for the UK and Their Utility for Functional Analysis and Policy
4C: Urban Economics (Chaired by Ross Bangs and Emma Ferranti) Ivann Schlosser What, where, how much ? Spatial and sectoral downscaling of global economic activity
Session 5
5A: Urban Transport Design (Chaired by Chen Zhong) Fulvio Lopane Modelling equitable public transport infrastructure: pre-implementation accessibility assessment of Bogotá’s metro system using synthetic GTFS
5A: Urban Transport Design (Chaired by Chen Zhong) Clara Peiret-Garcia Beyond the Commute: Temporal Ridership Patterns and Socioeconomic Stratification in London’s Underground Stations
5A: Urban Transport Design (Chaired by Chen Zhong) Zahra Mahabadi Short Distances Enable Walking Even for Car-Owning Families with Children: Implications for the X-Minute City
5A: Urban Transport Design (Chaired by Chen Zhong) Zihao Chen* Measuring the dynamics of service accessibility by bus in England: a comparison of scheduled and observed travel time variability
5B: Geospatial Healthcare Analysis (Chaired by Duncan Whyatt) Alice Varley* Developing measures of mental healthcare accessibility: a case study of Liverpool
5B: Geospatial Healthcare Analysis (Chaired by Duncan Whyatt) Aubrey Steingraber Gridded mapping of unvaccinated children in conflict settings: a tailored approach
5B: Geospatial Healthcare Analysis (Chaired by Duncan Whyatt) Felipe Portales* Community Detection for Primary Care Service Areas in Chile: Balancing Granularity and Flow Localisation
5B: Geospatial Healthcare Analysis (Chaired by Duncan Whyatt) Changwha Oh Geographic context and heart decompensation risks: Spatial pattern of socio-environmental determinants on heart valve disease in Northeast London
Session 6
6A: People & Population (Chaired by Samantha Cockings) Yatao Zhang Quantifying and explaining uncertainty in official small-area population estimates
6A: People & Population (Chaired by Samantha Cockings) Scott Orford Creating Symbology: Bringing digital maps to life with young people
6A: People & Population (Chaired by Samantha Cockings) Owen Goodwin Capturing Non-linear Neighbourhood Structure: An Autoencoder Approach to Census-based Dimensionality Reduction
6B: AI & Data Processing (Chaired by Stef De Sabbata) Yang Wang Understanding Airbnb Listing Performance through Spatial Semantics and Urban Amenities: Evidence from LLMs and XAI
6B: AI & Data Processing (Chaired by Stef De Sabbata) Nurwatik Nurwatik* Incorporating Topology on GPT-Based Geoparsing Model for Finer Geocoding Locations from Social Media Texts
6B: AI & Data Processing (Chaired by Stef De Sabbata) Yanbo Pang Unlocking Unlabelled GPS Data for Transport and Urban MobilityAnalysis via Hybrid Transfer and Iterative Profiling

All Posters

GISRUK 2026 Proceedings on Zenodo - you can find all of the proceedings for the talks and posters available on the GISRUK 2026 community on Zenodo link. Each individual poster in the session list below is linked directly to the corresponding resource on Zenodo.

Speaker Poster Title
AM Session
James Ackland Representing Missing Spatial Data
Anna Brázdová The Financial Burden of Pre-School Education in Czechia: Who Pays the Highest Price?
Qi Gong Some Like It Central: The Uneven Geography of Cinemas
Jennie Gray Perceived Safety and Greenspace Access: Predicting Avoidance Behaviour in Leeds and Bradford Parks
Dongsheng He Measuring volumetric urban design: Compression, multi-level connectedness, and functional mix in transit-oriented developments in Hong Kong
Cesar Marin Flores From 15-Minute Cities to 1-Kilogram CO₂ Cities: Trade-offs Between Accessibility and Emissions in Urban Mobility
Evgeny Noi From Binary Transitions to Continuous Intensification: Deep Change Modeling of Accra’s Urban Growth
Eliška Pospěchová The Impact of Erroneous Polygonal Coverage Topology on Spatial Statistical Methods
Meilin Shi Mapping Green Deficits: Assessing 3-30-300 Compliance in British Neighbourhoods
Danning Song Exploring ageing population mobility and public transport accessibility in the West Midlands
Dean Summers Making Earth Observation Research Reusable for Earth Action with EarthCODE
Yan Wang Is Robotaxi Travel Different from Traditional Taxi Travel? Divergent Spatial Patterns in San Francisco
Benjamin Woodier A Comparative Deep Learning Approach to Battle Damage Detection with Foundation Model Architectures and Open Access Sentinel-1 SAR Data
PM Session
Falha Alkhuzayyim F-GeoRAG: Few-Shot Retrieval-Augmented Generation with Large Language Models for Enhancing Geospatial Question Answering
Mohammed Almousa Measuring safe walking access to public transport in Riyadh using the SOLWEIG tool and the PHS model under extreme hot conditions
Nicholas Cork Applying Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (CRVA) mapping to regional transportation networks
Alper Dincer Democratizing Climate Analytics: A Local-First Approach using DuckDB, H3, and WASM
Rahul Gandhi Critical reflections on remote sensing methodologies for ethically and decolonially understanding the impact of war on the environment
Michal Iliev The (In)sufficient Accessibility Measure: Bringing Underserved Populations to the Forefront
Harry Kirby Mapping Inherited Infrastructure Risk across a Continuous Risk Spectrum: A Bottom-Up GIS Framework for Modelling Climate-Induced Power Cascades on Road Operability
Dongyi Ma Is the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park a Cool Zone in London?
Oluwatayo Ogunjobi Exploring GeoAI Application in Mapping Retail Location Intelligence
Craig Robson Assessing the impact of the Elizabeth Line on accessibility across Greater London
Lawrie Swinfen-Styles A methodological framework for archetyping properties and areas for targeted place-based retrofit
Yijing Zhang Exploring the Structural Changing Distribution of Physical Retail in England and Wales
Yuqi Zhao Transport Equity Implications of Metro Expansion: Uneven Accessibility Gains in Wuhan

Room Map

Conference Dinner

The Conference dinner will be held at The Exchange, a University of Birmingham building located in central Birmingham. The meal has been designed to celebrate the Helios Exhibition that opened in March 2026.

7.00 pm – Arrivals

7.30 pm – Start of food service

The three courses will last around 90 minutes to two hours. Drinks are not included within the meal, but there is a pay as you go bar.

Dress code is smart casual / business casual.