Hoeyun Kwon Geographer

I am a PhD student in the Department of Geographical and Sustainability Sciences at the University of Iowa. My research area is GIScience with an emphasis on geospatial artificial intelligence, big geospatial data, and disaster management. My specific research interests are predicting and analyzing many stages of a disaster using multi-source big geospatial data and social sensing.

For my master's thesis, I analyzed contents, location and time of tweets during 2011 flood in South Korea. My results revealed that flooding was reported in social media two hours prior to the first breaking news, which shows the effectiveness of citizen sensors in emergency situations. In my PhD, I plan to build upon my Master's research to develop novel methods and techniques in GIScience for multi-source analysis of social sensing and big geospatial data for disaster management.

In the future, I hope my research can contribute to make our society a safer place to live where fewer news stories convey tragic losses.