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Earth Observation Big Data and AI for Global Environmental Change Monitoring

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May 26

Speaker: Yifang Ban

Abstract: Our planet is facing unprecedented environmental challenges including rapid urbanization, deforestation, pollution, loss of biodiversity, rising sea-level, melting glacier and climate change. With its synoptic view, large area coverage at regular revisits, satellite remote sensing has been playing a crucial role in monitoring our changing planet. Earth observation (EO) satellites are now acquiring massive amount of satellite imagery with higher spatial resolution and frequent temporal coverage. The seminar will showcase KTH Geoinformatics’ research on EO big data and AI for continuous urban change detection, near real-time wildfire monitoring, rapid disaster damage mapping and environmental impact assessment.

Bio: Yifang Ban has been the professor of Geoinformatics at KTH since 2004 and is currently the Director of the Geoinformatics Division at the ABE school. Before joining KTH in 2004, Dr. Ban was a Tenured Associate Professor at York University in Toronto, Canada. She received a PhD from University of Waterloo, Canada. Professor Ban is a PI for the EO-AI4Change Detection pilot project funded by the KTH Digital Futures. She is a co-lead of Group on Earth Observations (GEO) initiative ‘Global Urban Observation and Information’, and a co-chair for ICA Commission on Sensor-Driven Mapping. She is the Lead PI for EO Science for Society projects ‘SAR4Wildfire’ and ‘EO4Urban’ funded by ESA, among others. She is also an invited Expert of the UN Habitat’s Technical Committee on Human Settlements Indicators for UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), She has been an Associate Editor and Guest Editor for major Remote Sensing journals and invited expert for EU and national grant application evaluations.