News
The 44th EARSeL Symposium happening from 26 – 29 May 2025 in Prague, Czech Republic, is open for abstract submission. We from CDL GEOHUM are hosting a special session on EO and AI for humanitarian emergency response. The session will entertain broader topics on algorithmic development, spatial and temporal transferability of GeoAI models for rapid information retrieval, use of GeoAI for various thematic areas (flooding, earthquake, fire risk, landslide, building, change and damage and others) in disaster risk response and evaluation of open source information layers quality and fit for humanitarian action.
Presentations
- Segment Anything Model for Refugee-Dwelling Extraction with Few Samples from High-Resolution Satellite Imagery. Yunya Gao and Hui Zhao, 18th Conference on Location Based Services (LBS 2023), Ghent, Belgium, 20.11.2023
- Deep-learning-based refugee-dwelling extraction from high-resolution satellite imagery, Yunya Gao, IEEE International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IEEE IHTC), Cartagena, Colombia (Online), 01.11.2023.
- Segment Anything Makes It Easier to Produce Deepfake Satellite Imagery, Yunya Gao, International Data Week 2023, Salzburg, Austria, 23.10.2023.
- Opening Plenary: Welcome to IDW 2023 ‘Spatial Data Science: Geographic Context Matters’. Getachew Workineh Gella, International Data Week 2023, Salzburg, Austria, 23.10.2023.
- Mapping Climate, Conflicts, and Epidemics: Development and Evaluation of a Geospatial Risk Assessment for Healthcare NGOs, Linda Petuschnig, Climate-Induced Migration: New perspectives and methodological innovations Malmö, Sweden, 16.10.2023.
- Dwellings as anomalies: integrating VAEs for unsupervised object counting in humanitarian emergency response. Getachew Workineh Gella, Symposium of the International Future Lab AI4EO-2023, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany, 09.10.2023.
- PeaceEye in the context of human security, humanitarian action and peace tech. Stefan Lang, International Digital Security Forum (ISDF) Vienna, Austria, 20.09.2023.
- Maps Translated from Satellite Imagery by Image-To-Image Translation May Be More Unreliable due to the Advent of Segment Anything Model, Yunya Gao, International Symposium on Location-Based Big Data and GeoAI 2023 (LocBigDataAI 2023), Cape Town, South Africa (Online), 12.08.2023.
- Variational Autoencoders for Unsupervised Object Counting from VHR Imagery: Applications in Dwelling Extraction from Forcibly Displaced People Settlement Areas. Getachew Workineh Gella, International Geosciences and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) 2023, Pasadena, California, USA, 19.07.2023.
- Deep Learning Powered Non-Local Speckle Filtering of Sentinel-1 Imagery and Its Potential for Humanitarian Action. Getachew Workineh Gella, International Geosciences and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) 2023, Pasadena, California, USA, 18.07.2023.
- Integration of sparse multi-source earth observation data with deep learning for crop type and yield estimation in smallholder farming areas. Getachew Workineh Gella, 13th International Symposium on Digital Earth on Earth intelligence to understand and protect our Living Planet, Athens, Greece, 12.07.2023.
- Weakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation for Dwelling Extraction in Refugee Camps from Very-High-Resolution Satellite Imagery. Yunya Gao, 13th International Symposium on Digital Earth on Earth intelligence to understand and protect our Living Planet Athens, Greece, 11.07.2023
- People in need – How satellite data reveal food and nutrition demand, Stefan Lang, CIVIS Global Days, University of Tübingen, Germany, Neue Aula, 25.05.2023.
- Bewertung von Malariarisiko mittels Daten- und Kartenverschneidung, Linda Petutschnig, Simulation in den Umwelt- und Geowissenschaften Bayreuth, Germany, 02.03.2023.
- Towards a geoprivacy-aware sharing of very high-resolution satellite imagery for humanitarian applications, Getachew Workineh Gella, IEEE GRSS second workshop on Remote Sensing Data Management Technologies in GeoScience 2022 (RSDM-GeoSci 2022), Paris, France, 02.12.2022.
- Spatially Transferable Dwelling Extraction from Multi-Sensor Imagery in IDP/Refugee Settlements: A Meta-Learning Approach, Getachew Workineh Gella, International Symposium on Applied Geoinformatics 2022, Chania, Greece, 14.10.2022.
- R & geospatial data: identifying vulnerable populations at risk, Linda Menk, GeOnG 2022, Chambéry, France, 26.10.2022.
- Role of Emerging Technologies for Humanitarian Response: current advances and prospects of integrating AI with Earth observation?, Getachew Workineh Gella, GeOnG 2022, Chambéry, France, 26.10.2022.
- Earth observation to foster peace building, Stefan Lang, ASPR 40 Years Anniversary Ceremony and Conference, Schlaining, Austria, 05.10.2022.
- Why a session on Hybrid AI? Complementary research approaches in machine learning and the need for a common language to bridge between research domains and user domains, Stefan Lang, GI_Salzburg22, Salzburg, Austria, 06.07.2022.
- Building extraction in the humanitarian context: constraints, challenges and opportunities for hybrid AI experiments from 10+ years of data collection, Yunya Gao and Getachew Workineh Gella, GI_Salzburg22, Salzburg, Austria, 06.07.2022.
- Assessing the Influences of Band Selection and Pretrained Weights on Semantic-Segmentation-Based Refugee Dwelling Extraction from Satellite Imagery, Yunya Gao, AGILE 2022, Vilnius, Lithuania, 16.06.2022.
- Integration of open-source solutions with deep learning for estimating crop production in data-scarce smallholder farming areas, Gella, G. W., ESA Living Planet Symposium 2022, Bonn, Germany, 23.05.2022.
- Explainable AI for Humanitarian Action, Stefan Lang and Dirk Tiede, International Conference on Image Processing Theory, Tools and Applications (IPTA), Salzburg, Austria, 22.04.2022.
- Big data and humanitarian mapping, Stefan Lang, Afro-Asian Institute, public seminar, Salzburg, Austria, 20.1.2022.
- Geospatial and EO-based technology for humanitarian action, Stefan Lang, MSF Open Board Meeting, 27.10.2021.
- Mask R-CNN-Based Building Extraction from Satellite Data in Humanitarian Action, Dirk Tiede, ESRI User Conference 2021: GIScience session, online, 12.7.-15.7.2021.
- Suggestions on the Selection of Satellite Imagery for Future Remote Sensing-based Humanitarian Applications, Yunya Gao, Symposium of the International Society for Digital Earth 2021 – Special Forum on Humanitarian Action, Salzburg, Austria, 08.07.2021.
- Multi-feature Sample Database for enhancing Deep Learning Tasks in Operational Humanitarian Applications, Stefan Lang, Symposium of the International Society for Digital Earth 2021 – Special Forum on Humanitarian Action, Salzburg, Austria, 08.07.2021.
- Testing Transferability of Deep Learning-based Dwelling Extraction in Refugee Camps, Gella Getachew Workineh, Symposium of the International Society for Digital Earth 2021 – Special Forum on Humanitarian Action, Salzburg, Austria, 08.07.2021.
- Extraction of Dwellings of Displaced Persons from VHR Radar Imagery – Current Challenges, Future Perspectives, Andreas Braun, Symposium of the International Society for Digital Earth 2021 – Special Forum on Humanitarian Action, Salzburg, Austria, 08.07.2021.
- Evaluation of DEMs Derived from Multi-Date Satellite Stereo Imagery for Urban Areas, Lorenz Wendt, Symposium of the International Society for Digital Earth 2021 – Special Forum on Humanitarian Action, Salzburg, Austria, 08.07.2021.
- Determining mortality rate by counting graves in satellite images, Lorenz Wendt, Flavio Finger (MSF), MSF Scientific Day 2021, online, 10.06.2021.
- Mask R-CNN based Mapping of Dwellings in Refugee Camps from Very High-Resolution Satellite Imagery, Getachew Workineh Gella, 40th EARSeL symposium 2021, Warsaw, Poland, 08.06.2021.
- Mask R-CNN-Based Building Extraction from VHR Satellite Data in Operational Humanitarian Response – an Example Related to Covid-19 Response in Khartoum, Sudan, Dirk Tiede, Esri Imagery and Remote Sensing Educators Summit 2021, online, 29.04.2021.
- Supporting urban sanitation management through the integration of EO-based indicators, Barbara Riedler, EARSeL joint workshop 2021: Earth Observation for sustainable cities and communities, online, 1.4.2021.
- Flood mapping with radar, Andreas Braun, MSF GIS week 2020, 24.09.2020.
- Radar imagery for humanitarian action, Andreas Braun, MSF GIS week 2020, 01.10.2020.
Posters
- Sentinel-1 SAR Data For Building Damage Assessment After The Turkey-Syria Earthquake, February 2023. FRINGE 2023, Jaggy, N., Dabiri, Z. , Braun, A., Jessen, L., Lang, S., Nafieva, E., Leeds, UK, 11.-15.09.2023.
- Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for semantic segmentation of dwellings with Unbalanced Optimal Transport. International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2023, Workshop on Machine Learning for Remote Sensing. Kigali, Rwanda, P. Sharma, N. Courty, G. Gella, S. Lang, May 2023. https://iclr.cc/virtual/2023/workshop/12829#wse-detail-14901.
- Earth Observation Services for Humanitarian Action, Living Planet Symposium, Bonn, S. Lang, P. Füreder, L. Wendt, D. Tiede, A. Braun, B. Schernthanner-Hofer, B. Riedler, A. Alobaidi, K. Herzinger and E. Rogenhofer, 23.-27.05.2022.
- Delineating and understanding urban structures through a multi-data approach, Living Planet Symposium, Bonn, B. Riedler, and S. Lang, 23.-27.05.2022.
- Assessing risk of forcibly displaced persons: Creation of a digital elevation model of the island of Bhasan Char from Sentinel-1 Stripmap products. Living Planet Symposium, Bonn, A. Braun, 23.-27.05.2022.
- Supporting humanitarian missions with ALOS PALSAR-2, Joint PI Meeting of JAXA Earth Observation Missions, online, A. Braun, January 2021.
Webinars and Workshops
- PERN Cyberseminar on refugee and internally displaced populations, environmental impacts and climate risks (10.05.2021 – 19.05.2021)
Paper: EO-based environmental impact assessment of camps: a differentiated spatial view using multi-scale satellite imagery
- EARSeL Joint virtual workshop: Earth Observation for sustainable cities and communities (30.03.2021 – 21.04.2021)
Abstract: Supporting urban sanitation management through the integration of EO-based indicators (Riedler B., Nödel J., Siber R., Andriessen N., Strande L., Lang S., 2021, in: Abstract book Earth Observation for sustainable cities and communities )
Recording of presentation: for workshop participants
Events
GEOHUM was well presented at the International Data Week 2023 which took place in Salzburg from 23.-26. October 2023.
Gella Getachew was invited as speaker at the opening plenary, Yunya Gao gave a presentation on ‘Segment Anything to produce deepfake satellite imagery’ and we had a booth at the exhibition area.
Master and doctoral theses
PhD Theses
- Getachew Gella: Multi-sensor integration for Earth observation based humanitarian action – issus of uncertainty in the information extraction and delivery process [04/2024]
- Linda Petutschnig: Understanding integrated risks through spatial data [03/2024]
- Yunya Gao: Applications of deep learning and remote sensing in refugee/internally displaced person (IDP) camp mapping [03/2024]
- Zahra Dabiri: Investigation and evaluation of radar and optical Earth observation data in an object-based image analysis framework [09/2021]
MSc Theses
- Franziska Halbritter: Evaluation of the Regularize Building Footprint function for the generalization of refugee dwellings based on very high resolution satellite imagery [11/2023]
- Adriko Kennedy: Multi-modal fusion of optical and radar satellite image time series for deforestation mapping in the Amazonian forest [06/2023]
- Andreas Reithofer: GIS based flood risk assessment of heavy rainfall events for data scarce regions in the case study of Carrefour, Haiti (M.Sc. UNIGIS) [05/2023]
- Niklas Jaggy: Deep learning powered non-local speckle filtering of Sentinel-1 imagery and its benefits for geohumanitarian action [04/2023]
- Francesco Collivignarelli: Flood and accessibility monitoring and risk analysis for the humanitarian sector (M.Sc. UNIGIS) [02/2022]
- Rene Kaspar: Assess the level of damage due to a flood event using a building footprint [11/2021]
- Tobias Kugler: Höhenmodelle as Multi-Date tristereo Pléiades Satellitenbildern (M.Sc. UNIGIS) [10/2021]
- Stella Ofori-Ampofo: Multi-sensor crop type identification using pixel-set encoders and temporal self-attention [06/2021]
- Sheriff Jimoh: Mapping and monitoring slums using geoinformation technologies [06/2021]
- Frank Willing: Comparison of TempCNN and LightGBM for crop type classification using Sentinel-2 Imagery [01/2021]
- Emmanouil Skourtis: Coherence-based flood mapping in urban areas (M.Sc. UNIGIS) [ in progress]
- Johannes Grünewald: Identification of road damages from Sentinel-1 satellite imagery (B.Sc. University of Tübingen) [in progress]
- Vanessa Streifeneder: Analysing the impact of grey data quality in the training phase of deep-learning models for dwelling extraction in refugee camps
Public outreach
- TV shot ORF Salzburg Heute (16.09.2023): Uni hilft “Ärtzte ohne Grenzen” mit Analysen
- Girl’s Day 2023 (27.04.2023)
- GIS Day 2022 (16.11.2022): Fernerkundung für humanitäre Einsätze, Lorenz Wendt.
- Christian Doppler Gesellschaft (10.2022): Scientist of the Month (Oktober 2022) – Stefan Lang
- Radio Ö1 Journal-Panorama (05.12.2022): Friedensarbeit vor neuen Herausforderungen
- Radio Ö1 Mittagsjournal (05.05.2022): Satellitenbilder dokumentieren “vergessene Krisen”
- MSF Blog (22 April 2022): Humanitäre Hilfe aus der Vogelperspektive
- Der Standard (15.07.2020): Der Blick aus dem All hilft bei humanitären Einsätzen
- Salzburger Nachrichten (13.07.2020): Satellitendaten unterstützen humanitäre Einsätze
- meinbezirk.at (10.07.2020): Wissenschaft unterstützt humanitäre Hilfe mit Erdbeobachtung
- APA (08.07.2020): Erdbeobachtung für humanitäre Hilfe
- APA (08.07.2020): Neues CD-Labor unterstützt Ärzte ohne Grenzen mit Satellitenbildern
- science.orf.at (08.07.2020): Satellitenbilder für humanitäre Zwecke
- studium.at (08.07.2020): Neues CD-Labor unterstützt Ärzte ohne Grenzen mit Satellitenbildern