Yan Wang

Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER)
Associate Professor
(352) 294-3376
Antevy Hall
yanw@ufl.edu

Areas of Focus

Sustainability (Built Environment Resilience, Smart Buildings/Cities) building sustainability through resilient built environment research and better infrastructure planning for emerging technologies to reduce GHG emission.

Biography

Dr. Yan Wang is an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Urban & Regional Planning within the College of Design, Construction and Planning, University of Florida. She is a founding faculty member of the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER) and the founder and director of the Urban Agility and Resilience Lab. Her research focuses on developing and applying computational, data-driven, and human-centered approaches to quantity and manage urban resilience in the face of disruptions — from hazards to emerging technologies.

Over the past decade, Dr. Wang’s scholarship has advanced three interconnected areas:

  1. Measuring, explaining, and enhancing urban and community resilience, including vulnerability, mobility resilience, and the role of time poverty, and social infrastructure in disasters;
  2. Ensuring information agility, integrity, and trustworthy communication in digital and sociotechnical systems, particularly during crises;
  3. Planning healthy, adaptive, and future-ready cities through spatial analytics, digital twins, and theory-guided, community-centric AI.

Her pioneering work bridges urban resilience, urban analytics, spatial and infrastructure planning, crisis informatics, and responsible AI. Recognized as one of the top-ranked female scholars in urban analytics globally, Dr. Wang has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications (Google Scholar) in leading journals such as Nature Scientific Data, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, Sustainable Cities and Society, Landscape and Urban Planning, Risk Analysis, Natural Hazards Review, JAMA Network Open, Journal of Management in Engineering, and Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering. Her recent research further advances explainable deep learning, agentic AI, and generative AI for spatial planning and community resilience.

Dr. Wang has secured more than $3.3 million in research funding, including eight prestigious federal awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Her recognitions include the NSF CAREER Award (2025), AI Pioneer (2025), DCP IDEA Award (2025), UF Excellence Awards for Assistant Professors (2022), UF Global Research Fellow (2018), Weather Ready Research Fellowships (Natural Hazard Center, 2021), Mitigation Matters Award (Natural Hazard Center, 2020), ASCE Journal of Management in Engineering Accolade Best Paper Award (2021), UF Research Promotion Initiative Award (2021), UF Great Teaching Certificate (2021), DCP Excellence in Research Award (2021) and Virginia Tech IGEP BioBuild Fellowship (2015-2018).

Her teaching emphasizes tailored pedagogies and contextualized curricula for urban analytics, contributing centrally to the department’s Urban Analytics Program and the integration of spatial data science. Dr. Wang has served on the Editorial Board of the ASCE Journal of Management in Engineering since 2020 and is the Guest Editor for the Journal of Planning Education and Research’s special issue on AI and Urban Planning (2024-2027).

Prior to joining UF, Dr. Wang earned her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech and both her master’s degree in asset valuation and bachelor’s degree in construction engineering and management from the School of Economics and Management at Beijing Jiaotong University.

Research Topics

Urban Resilience; Urban Analytics; Spatial and Infrastructure Planning; Crisis Informatics (Social Media); Healthy Cities, Human Dynamics; Responsible AI; Smart and Connected Communities.

Opportunities

The Urban Agility and Resilience Lab at UF is recruiting doctoral students and a postdoctoral scholar. For more information, please visit https://www.complexresilientcities.com/positions/.

Affiliations

Founding Faculty, Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER)

Founder and Director, Urban Agility and Resilience Laboratory

Affiliate Faculty, UF Informatics Institute

Affiliate Faculty, UF Transportation Institute

Affiliate Faculty, Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World

Affiliate Faculty, Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center

Affiliate Faculty, UF Health Cancer Center

Awards

Interdisciplinary Excellence Award (IDEA), College of Design, Construction and Planning (2025)

National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2025)

University of Florida Excellence Awards for Assistant Professors (2022)

ASCE Journal of Management in Engineering Honorable Mention Award (2021)

University of Florida Research Promotion Initiative Award (2021)

Excellence in Research Award, College of Design, Construction and Planning (2021)

Great Teaching Certificate, UF Center for Teaching Excellence (2021)

Weather Ready Research Fellowships, Natural Hazard Center (NSF & NOAA) (2021)

Mitigation Matters Award, Natural Hazard Center (2020)

Global Research Fellow, by University of Florida (November 8, 2018)

Virginia Tech IGEP BioBuild Fellowship, by Virginia Tech (August 2015 – May 2018)

Publications

Google Scholar

ResearchGate

Selected Grants

2025 Co-PI: Architected Materials for Extreme Resistance in Coastal Applications (AMERICA): Phase 1 Grant: Prospectus Development
Sponsor: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

2025-2030: CAREER: Generative Deep Learning for Post-Disaster Spatial Regeneration Planning
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #2440023)
Programs: Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment & Human-Envi & Geographical Scis

2024-2025 PI: RAPID: Assessing Urgent Time Use Dynamics Among Time-Poor Populations in Preparation for Hurricane Helene and Milton
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #2505675)
Program: CMMI-HDBE-Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment

2024-2025 PI: Investigating Neighborhood Mobility Resilience and Aging Vulnerability under Environmental Shocks
Sponsor: National Institute on Aging, Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center at the University of Florida
Program: Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center (OAIC) Pilot Study

2023-2026 Co-PI: Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Medium: Information Integrity: A User-centric Intervention
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #2323794)
Program: CNS-Secure &Trustworthy Cyberspace

2023-2026 PI: Spatial Explanation and Planning for Resilience of Community-Based Small Businesses to Environmental Shocks
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #2316450)
Program: CMMI-HDBE-Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment

2022-2023 Faculty: GulfSouth Studio
Sponsor: The National Academy of Sciences Engineering and Medicine

2021-2022 PI: SCC-PG: SmartCurb: Building Smart Urban Curb Environments
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #2124858)
Program: Smart and Connected Communities – Planning Grants

2020-2021 PI: RAPID: Dynamic Interactions between Human and Information in Complex Online Environments Responding to SARS-COV-2.
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #2028012)
Program: CMMI-Humans, Disasters and Built Environment

2020-2021 Co-PI: SCC-PG: Coordinated Safety Management Across Smart Communities
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #1951816)
Program: Smart and Connected Communities – Planning Grants

2018-2019 PI (Sub award): RAPID: Discovering Crises within Crises – Real-Time Detection, Tracking and Visualization of Emergent Crises in Hurricanes.
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (Award #1760645)
Program: CISE-Information & Intelligent Systems

2021-2022 PI: Weather Ready Research Fellowship: Assessing the Impact of Geo-Targeted Warning Messages on Residents Evacuation Decisions Before a Hurricane
Sponsor: Natural Hazards Center (flow from NSF and NOAA)

2021-2021 Key Personnel: Upper Suwannee River Resilience Columbia County and The Town of White Springs
Sponsor: Florida Department of Economic Opportunity

2021 PI: Assessing Disaster Impact in Real Time (ADIR): A Data-Driven System Integrating Human, Hazards, and the Built Environment
Sponsor: UF Office of the Provost-Research Promotion Initiative Award

2020-2021 PI: Examining Digital Vulnerability to Flooding Among Subsidized Housing Residents in Florida.
Sponsor: Natural Hazards Center-Mitigation Matters Research Program.

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