Professor of Geography, School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences, Australian Defence Force Academy

Visiting Fellow
Geographical information science, geomorphology
Phone: +61 (0)2 6268 9577
Fax: + 61 (0)2 6125 0746
E-mail: b.lees@adfa.edu.au

Brian was initially commissioned as a regular officer in the RAF, serving in the Middle East, Europe and Africa. After gaining civil commercial pilot's and flight navigator's licences he flew with ADASTRA on mineral exploration and mapping projects. He subsequently took a first-class honours degree in geomorphology from the University of Sydney. From 1977 he worked on a number of joint-venture projects becoming a director of two small exploration companies and the exploration manager of a third. This led him to form a company to carry out environmental and exploration services for larger organisations. Brian obtained a PhD, also from the University of Sydney, in 1984. He joined the ANU in 1985. Brian has received a number of awards for his work including the Australasian Institute of Spatial Information Science and Technology (AISIST) Prize in recognition of a "substantial contribution to the study of the science of Urban and Regional Information Systems", 1997; the Land Victoria Fellowship, University of Melbourne, 1999 and the Eminent Individual Award; Australasian Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (AURISA) 1999. He is an editor of the International Journal of Geographic Information Science, is on the editorial board of GEOINFORMATICA and has just completed a term on the editorial board of Transactions in GIS. He is a Member of the International Association of Science and Technology for Development (IASTED) Technical Committee on "Modelling and Simulation".

Professional Activities

I maintain an active research and teaching program focused on aspects of Global Change. The first phase was the construction of a database of geomorphic evidence for past climate change across northern Australia. In the second phase I set up a research program to improve the reliability of change detection techniques. This led to work in adapting inductive and data driven modelling techniques to the predictive mapping of land cover and land degradation. My students and I have built up comprehensive GIS databases based on a range of field sites. These have been used to test, and refine the use of inductive learning, and other artificial intelligence techniques such as neural networks and genetic algorithms, for environmental management. They have been very successful. My research activity continues to be the development and application of tools to carry out integrated analysis of global data. My teaching is intimately linked with this research.

Selected Publications

Lees, B.G. 2006. Timing and formation of coastal dunes in northern and eastern Australia. Journal of Coastal Research.

Doran, B. and Lees, B.G. 2005. Investigating the spatio-temporal links between disorder, crime and the fear of crime. Professional Geographer. 57(1),1-12.

Huang, Z and Lees, B.G. 2005. Representing and reducing error in natural resource classification. International Journal of Geographic Information Science.

Huang, Z and Lees, B.G. 2004. Combining Non-Parametric models for multisource predictive forest mapping. Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing. 70(4), 415-427.

Laffan, S. and Lees, B.G. 2004. Predicting regolith properties using environmental correlation: a comparison of spatially global and spatially local approaches. Geoderma, v120(3-4), pp 241-258.

Lees, B.G. 2002. Australian Geography and GIS. Australian Geographical Studies, 40(1); 33-47.