Key Laboratory of Geographical Environment Monitoring of the Greater Bay Area, Ministry of Natural Resources was led by Shenzhen University, and jointly established by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Professor Qingquan Li is the director and leader of the Laboratory. Currently, 48 academic staff and more than 50 postgraduate students are working at the Laboratory.

The Laboratory was approved by The Ministry of Land and Resources and trial organized with the name of “Key Laboratory of the National Surveying, Mapping and Geographic Information Bureau for Coastal Geographic Environmental Monitoring” in 2013, and then passed the acceptance inspection in 2017. In January 2020, as authorized by the Ministry of Natural Resources of the People’s Republic of China, the Laboratory formally changed its name to the “Key Laboratory of Geographical Environment Monitoring of the Greater Bay Area, Ministry of Natural Resources”.

The strategic development direction of the Laboratory is to support the high-quality development and ecological civilization construction of coastal areas. It’s focused on the research of fundamental theories and key technologies for the geographic environment monitoring under the rapid urbanization. The Laboratory is based on the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, aiming at the whole of China for realizing the smart sensing, multiple dimensional monitoring, and analysis and application of waterfront areas. To serve the national strategies for sustainable development in the Great Bay Area, the Laboratory aims to build as an innovation research platform and talented person cultivation base for the geographic environment monitoring.

The Laboratory focuses on a wide range of research in the Great Bay Area, mainly including 1) monitoring, assessment, and early warning of natural resources, 2) monitoring of natural disaster and infrastructural health, 3) analyzing of urbanization and ecological environment coupling, and 4) intelligent analyzing of geospatial information and its services.

The Laboratory has excellent experimental environment and instruments, such as MODIS satellite data receiving stations, dual-band LiDAR, high-resolution ground spectrometer, waterfront surveying and mapping equipment, unmanned aerial vehicle, underwater hyperspectral profiler, GPS receivers with a well-developed online system, and high-performance servers. In recent years, the research team has published more than 400 scientific articles in leading journals and conference proceedings and has also obtained many national and provincial and ministerial level science and technology awards. Besides, the research team has made a series of high-impact and original innovations in scientific research and key projects to monitor the geographical environment of the Greater Bay Area.