Industry Talks: Spatial Data Science
Organised by Dr. Elisabetta Pietrostefani
The spatial data science community is exponentially growing every year! Countless businesses and organisations need to ask important location-based questions to adapt to the new era we are living in.
These industry talks represented an opportunity for students to meet experts from the GIS and Spatial Data Science community working in both businesses and non-profit organisations. Students had the opportunity to hear about speakers’ work and ask questions about how they have analysed and modelled spatial data for companies, organisations, or other projects.
Find details of the events Lent Term 2022 programme below:
Joanne Hayek - Designer and interactive mapping coder
16 February, 15:00.
Focusing on sustainability and innovation, Joanne’s practice spans across scales and disciplines through a variety of projects that combine social entrepreneurship and academic research. In recent years, Joanne has ventured into the fields of digital design, programming and data science through community projects that explore real-time interactive mapping as a tool for sustainable co-planning. In 2020, in response to the Beirut blast, she co-designed and coded the digital platform Emerge Beirut offering users the possibility to share their actions in real-time to help coordinate the post-blast recovery efforts. In 2021, her work was exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale as part of the project Beirut Shifting Grounds, in which she presented a dynamic data visualization and mapping of the grassroots deployments taking place in Beirut since October 2019. In November 2021, Joanne co-curated Shape Your City, an interactive installation exhibited as part of the Dubai Design Week in which she developed a web-app that allowed visitors to co-design the future of their city in real-time. Her research was also presented as part of the latest SMUS conference -Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability Conference- in 2021 and as guest lecturer at MIT’s school of architecture and planning.
Sebastian Estivill & Karla Alfaro – Voluntary Intelligence Center (CIV)
28 February, 17:00.
The Voluntary Intelligence Center (CIV) is a non-profit Civil Association established in Mexico City after a major earthquake on September 19, 2017. The primary mission of the association is to develop technologies and strategies to help the civilian population during future disasters. In collaboration with the academical sector, the CIV has developed 3 major projects: VATRE, SIRAC, and Silvana:
1) VATRE focuses on building the chassis and electromechanical components of UAV's to be deployed during the response phase.
2) SIRAC uses image recognition algorithms along with robot vision and navigation to perform as "the brain" of the CIV's UAV assets.
3) Silvana concerns the creation of virtual 3D scenarios simulators to train human UAV pilots and strategists, as well as generate images for the convolutional neural networks trainings.
Sebastian is the founder of the CIV is a Mechanical Electrical Engineer. During the 2017 earthquake, he coordinated the voluntary response efforts in collaboration with the Mexican Army and other federal institutions. Karla Alfaro is an Economist, Data, and Political Scientist who specializes in econometrics and data analysis. Her work on computer vision provided the CIV, in 2020, with its first trained convolutional neural network to detect collapsed buildings using aerial images.
Matt Forest - Head of Solutions Engineering at Carto
Miguel Álvarez García - Director of Data Science at Carto
15 March, 16:00.
Matt and Miguel work with a range of customers to study geospatial problems and develop spatial data science analyses to integrate into Carto’s core platform. They use a wide range of tools to solve problems and use creative approaches, both in terms of technology and spatial data science techniques, to solve complex geospatial problems. Carto is a Software as a Service cloud computing platform that provides GIS, web mapping, and spatial data science tools. The company is positioned as a Location Intelligence platform due to tools with an aptitude for data analysis and visualization that do not require previous GIS or development experience.
Andrew Zolli - Chief Impact Office at Planet
30 March, 17:00.
Andrew Zolli oversees Sustainable Development and Global Impact initiatives of Planet, a breakthrough geospatial imaging organization that has deployed the largest constellation of Earth-observing satellites in history. Together, Planet’s satellites images the entire surface of the Earth every day, in high resolution. The resulting data has transformational value for addressing a host of global challenges, including measuring and monitoring natural capital, ensuring human rights, predicting food insecurity, assessing climate change, accelerating disaster response, and improving conservation, among others. Andrew is also a well-known writer and thinker on the use of technology for social and ecological impact, and the author of bestselling Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back, now published in many languages worldwide.
Jonathan America - TomTom
11 May, 15:30.
TomTom is a leading independent geolocation technology specialist, shaping mobility with highly accurate maps, navigation and real-time traffic information. Jonathan is the Senior Product Marketing Manager at TomTom. He has been working with location technology data and mobility products for more than 10 years, bringing always a "customer-first", "user-centric" approach throughout all product life cycle.
This event will take place in person in MAR.2.06.