Rate My Professor Cecilia Xia

Dr. Jianhong (Cecilia) Xia serves as Adjunct Associate Professor in Geographic Information Systems within the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Curtin University. Previously, she held the position of Associate Professor and Director of the Geographic Information Science program at the university. With more than 20 years of professional experience, Xia is a distinguished GIS educator, spatial analyst, and modeller. She has also worked extensively as a transport geographer, focusing her research on tourism movements, public transport development and accessibility, driving behaviours particularly among older adults, spatial navigation and wayfinding, human mobility patterns, and urban sustainability challenges including surface urban heat islands and ventilation dynamics. Her contributions extend to supervising doctoral research on spatio-temporal modelling of park-and-ride accessibility and unpacking older drivers' visual-motor coordination at roundabouts.

Xia has authored over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers, and book chapters, garnering more than 8,000 citations according to Google Scholar. Key publications include 'Spatial and temporal modelling of tourist movements using Semi-Markov processes' (Tourism Management, 2011), 'Skills, not just age, affect older drivers' performance on the road' (media-highlighted research, 2018), 'Contributions of sea–land breeze and local climate zones to the spatiotemporal variations of urban ventilation' (npj Urban Sustainability, 2022), 'Warming and cooling effects of local climate zones on urban surfaces across Australia' (Environmental Research Letters, 2022), and 'Machine learning and tectonic setting determination' (Geoscience Frontiers, 2024). She has successfully obtained over $1 million in competitive research grants from the Australian Research Council, government agencies, and industry since 2005. Notable honors include the Curtin University Faculty of Science and Engineering Excellence and Innovation in Teaching Award in 2012 and the Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute WA Education Development Award in 2013. These accomplishments highlight her profound influence on geospatial education, transport geography, and urban planning research.