Songhua Hu

Songhua Hu

CrowdSensing, Human Mobility, GeoAI, Network Science

Greetings! I’m Songhua Hu (胡松华), a Postdoctoral Researcher at MIT specializing in urban mobility sensing and computing. My work leverages big data and new computational methods to advance smart, sustainable, resilient, and equitable mobility systems.

My research specifically involves: 1) Collecting and fusing multi-structured mobility data collected from Mobile Phones, City Cameras, Connected Vehicles, and Social Media. 2) Simulating and forecasting large-scale human movement under both Recurrent and Non-Recurrent scenarios. 3) Modeling the interaction between Human Mobility and Urban Environment, Transport Network, Public Health, and Social Equity.

My theoretical foundation surrounds Deep learning, Statistics, Traffic Simulation, Network Science. Applications of my work span areas such as: Sustainable Mobility (Vehicle Emission Estimation, Vehicle Electrification, Mobility as a Service (MaaS)), Emergency Response(Network Resilience, Community Vulnerability), Transport and Health(Computational Epidemiology, Human Exposure, Health Disparity), Transportation Planning, Management, and Operation(Travel Demand Modelling, Transportation Economics, Travel Behavioral Analysis, Accessibility).

🔥🔥I’m always excited to collaborate with those interested in my research! Currently, my main focus is on applying LLMs to human mobility modeling in transportation. Feel free to reach out via email (hsonghua@mit.edu)—I’d love to connect and discuss further!

Research Interests

Human Mobility | Sustainable Mobility | Mobility Resilience | Transport and Health | Miscellaneous (Transportation Economics, Public Perception, MaaS) …

Connecting the dots: Human mobility + X

Education

  • Ph.D., Civil & Environmental Engineering (Transportation), University of Maryland, College Park, 2023
  • M.S., Transportation Engineering, Tongji University, 2019
    • Thesis: “Promoting electric vehicle efficiency in large-scale carsharing systems”
  • B.S., Civil & Environmental Engineering (Transportation), Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), 2016
    • Thesis: “Simulation of pedestrian flow in metro systems: a dynamic floor-field cellular automata approach”

Publications

  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (1 Paper).
  • Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice (4 Papers, 2 First-Author).
  • Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies (4 Papers, 3 First-Author).
  • Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment (3 Papers, 3 First-Author).
  • Journal of Transport Geography (2 Papers, 2 First-Author).
  • Sustainable Cities and Society (1 Paper, 1 First-Author).
  • IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine (1 Paper, 1 First-Author).
  • International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (1 Paper, 1 First-Author).
  • Journal of the Royal Society Interface (1 Paper).
  • Journal of Planning Education and Research (1 Paper).
  • Vaccine (2 Papers, 2 First-Author).
  • PLOS One (2 Papers, 1 First-Author).
  • Health & Place (1 Paper).
  • International Journal of Sustainable Transportation (1 Paper).
  • Transportation Research Record (2 Papers).
  • IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (2 Papers, 2 First-Author).
  • Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting (>20 Posters/Presentations).

See the full list here: Google Scholar

Awards

Reviews

  • Journal Article Reviewer
    • Transportation: Accident Analysis and Prevention; Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering; IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems; International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology; Intelligent Transportation Infrastructure; Journal of Transport Geography; Journal of Transport and Land Use; Journal of Advanced Transportation; Transportation; Transportation Research Part A/B/C/D/E; Transport Policy; Traffic Injury Prevention; Travel Behavior and Society; Transportation Letters; Transportation Research Record; Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives; Urban Rail Transit.
    • Planning and GIS: Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society; Cities; Computational Urban Science; Geo-spatial Information Science; International Journal of Geographical Information Science; Journal of Planning Education and Research; Journal of Urban Technology; Regional Studies; Sustainable Cities and Society.
    • Public Health: AIMS Public Health; Biosafety and Health; Health Data Science; The Lancet Regional Health - Western Pacific.
    • Multidisciplinary: Cogent Engineering; IEEE Access; Information Fusion; International Journal of Data Science and Analytics; Nature Cities; Scientific Reports; Technological Forecasting and Social Change; PLOS One.
  • Conference Proceeding Reviewer
    • TRB Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting; COTA International Conference of Transportation Professionals; IACP International Association of China Planning; IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society Conference Management System

See the full list here: Web of Science

Skills

  • Programming
    • Python, R, SQL, Cloud Computing (Spark, AWS), Matlab, Git, Bash, Java, HTML.
  • Statistics
    • Causal inference, Generalized additive mixed model, Time series, Survival analysis, Spatial econometrics, Discrete choice model.
  • Deep learning/Machine learning
    • Explainable AI, Spatiotemporal forecasting, Graph neural network, Computer vision, Natural language processing, Traditional ML.
  • Traffic Simulation
    • Micro (Vissim, Sumo), Agent (MATSim, DTALite, AnyLogic), Macro (TransCAD, Visum).
  • (Spatiotemporal) Network Analysis
    • ArcGIS, QGIS, Geopandas, NetworkX, igraph, OSMnx.