About

I am a Professor of Geographic Information Science in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London. I am also the Director of the UCL Extreme Citizen Science group, which is dedicate to allow any community, regardless of their literacy, to use scientific methods and tools to collect, analyse, interpret and use information about their area and activities.

Research

My research interests include Public access and use of Environmental Information, following work started in my PhD thesis (completed 2002); Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Usability Engineering aspects of GIS; and Societal aspects of GIS use – in particular, participatory mapping and Citizen Science.

Since 2001, I have secured over £4.28 million in research funding, from research councils, the public and private sectors and charities. I received funding for a range of projects, including the following:

• JISC G3 (IIGLU)  – Bridging the Gap between the GeoWeb and GIS  – Development of a geospatial tutorial using Google Maps
• EU FP7 project ‘everyAware’. Collaborative project with the Fondazione ISI – Institute for Scientific Interchange, Italy; Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy; Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany; and the Flemish Institute of Technological Research, Belgium to explore participatory sensing of urban environment and behaviour change.
• Extreme Citizen Science, funded by EPSRC through their ‘Challenging Engineering’ award to create the ExCiteS research group.
• Adaptable Suburbs, funded by EPSRC and ESRC and focusing on a detailed study of four suburban town centres in London.
• Bridging the Gaps: Sustainable Urban Spaces, funded by EPSRC to encourage multi-disciplinary research at UCL, especially in the areas of engineering and the built environment. The project runs from March 2008 to February 2011.
• Towards Successful Suburban Town Centres, funded by EPSRC and focusing on London’s suburban town centres. The project is already influencing policy by being part of a policy review, carried out by URBED on behalf of the North West London strategic alliance. The project ran from October 2006 to December 2009.
• Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with the UnLtd, the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs. The project focused on the development of longitudinal evaluation of their activities and was part of their strategic evaluation programme. The project ran from October 2006 to October 2008, and was rated ‘Very Good’.
• KTP with Dr. Foster Intelligence on the use of Geographical analysis and visualisation in the development of new information products for the healthcare sector. The project ran from May 2007 to April 2009, and was rated ‘Outstanding’. It was followed by a funding for Engineering Doctorate project.
• Mapping Change for Sustainable Communities – an UrbanBuzz project aimed at mapping environmental change and development in London. The project combined both community development and participatory mapping, using a public mapping system to monitor local sustainability and local development plans. The project was carried out in collaboration with London 21 Sustainability Network and Planning Aid for London. The project ran from May 2007 to December 2008.

More details about my experience and various projects on which I have worked on in the past 20 years can be found in the biography section of my site.

Teaching

I was the course tutor of the University of London M.Sc. in GIScience from 2002 to 2006, again in 2010 and continue to teach on this and other programmes in my department at UCL. Course material is published on the departmental Intranet. This system is accessible only to registered users.

I have supervised 22 PhD students over the past 8 years. As first supervisor to Claire Ellul, Katerina Christopoulou, Mojtaba Barhami, Ana Simão, Hanif Rahemtulla, Nikos Katsos, Byron Antoniou, Tyng-Rong Roan, Zhiwei Cao, Jessica Wardlaw, Seong K. Choi, Thomas Koukoletsus, Filippo Campagna-Popolo, Diana Masstracci Sanchez, Christian Nold, and Gianfranco Gliozzo. As second supervisor to Kate Jones, Christian Castle, Tina Thomson, Catherine Lowe, Artemis Skarlatidou, Andrew Chilvers, Enrica Verrucci, Therese Bajada, Elles van Asseldonk, Karin Talmor (Tel Aviv University) and Nama Budhathoki (University of Illinois).

Consultancy

With over 23 years of practical GIS experience in both academia and commercial organisations, I offer a combination of practical and theoretical knowledge. In the consultancy section I provide information about my areas of expertise and consultancy projects.

Publications and presentations

The publications and presentations list is from the UCL publication system and includes access to the full text where copyright permits.

Contact details – are available here
About the name: Po Ve Sham means ‘Here and There’ in Hebrew…