Dr. Xu is a GIScientist and quantitative social scientist who integrates GIS and spatial statistical methods with theories from geography, demography, sociology, population studies and urban studies, to address pressing societal issues. His primary research focuses on applying innovative GIS technology, spatial and statistical analyses to study human population dynamics at different spatial scales in the United States. These include the growth and decline of population of cities, population migration among different places across the United States, neighborhood effects on crime and health, etc. He is also interested in approaching these dynamics by using the network/system method, to study how places and people are interconnected to form the structures and patterns of the geospatial systems, and how the systems evolve over time.
His ongoing projects include studies on neighborhood effects on birth outcome and violence incidents in City of Milwaukee, areal interpolation of US census data, epidemic diffusion along social contact networks, population migration in the United States, and effects of hurricane damages on populations along U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts.
