Dr Jin Rui joined the Department of Geography at King’s College London in April 2025 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Spatial Analytics and Machine Learning.

Prior to this, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Geoinformatics at Heidelberg University in Germany, and he obtained his PhD in Spatial Planning from the Technical University of Dortmund, Germany. His interdisciplinary research spans smart cities, GeoAI, urban visual intelligence, and risk management.

Jin currently serves as a guest editor for a special issue of the international journal Land (Q2) and is a reviewer for 20 international academic journals, including Nature Cities and Computers, Environment and Urban Systems (CEUS).

More information is available on his personal website

Research

Dr Rui’s research focuses on the integration of spatial data science and urban artificial intelligence, particularly in the following areas:

• Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI): Developing and applying AI methods such as deep learning and neural networks to process geospatial data for tasks like building attribute prediction, disaster analysis, and spatial quality quantification.
• Urban Data Science: Fusing large-scale urban datasets, including street view imagery, mobility trajectories, and social media data, to extract multi-source insights for well-being assessment, perceived safety evaluation, and urban regeneration support.
• Urban Visual Intelligence: Employing computer vision and street-level imagery to extract visual characteristics of urban environments and explore their relationships with urban functions and residents' perceptions.

Jin is currently involved in the British Academy-funded Sinking Cities project led by Dr Zara Shabrina and also collaborates with Dr Yijing Li from the Department of Informatics on a project exploring digitalization and public health.