Earth Observation for Mapping Margins
With the global slum/informal settlement population now estimated to exceed 1 billion — and a significantly more acute situation in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) — there is a pressing need to systematically monitor the spatial and temporal dynamics of such deprived neighbourhoods and assess the exposure of their vulnerable communities to multiple hazards. Despite its significance, this remains a substantially under-researched domain.
The primary scientific objective of this two-year research project is to exploit the capabilities of Earth Observation (EO) and Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI)
to develop methodologies for characterizing the evolution of urban settlements with informal morphologies, assessing their population dynamics, and quantifying multi-hazard exposure over time.
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EARSeL 9th Workshop on the Global South
On April 17 2026, by Sabine Vanhuysse
The 9th Workshop on the Global South is co-organised by Monika Kuffer and Angela Abascal, in the frame of the 45th EARSeL Symposium (29 September - 2 October 2026, Athens, Greece).
This workshop convenes researchers and practitioners to assess the current state of EO to analyse transformations, environmental pressures, crises, and inequalities in the Global South. We will focus on methodological requirements for robustness and generalisation across sensors (including emerging sources such as night-time lights from SDGSAT-1), geographies, and time, and on integrating bottom-up data (citizen science, community mapping, administrative records) to reduce bias, strengthen validation, and align indicators with lived experience. Read more...
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On April 17 2026
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DynEO4SLUMS researcher at the ELLIS Winter School 2026 in Athens, Greece
On March 31 2026, by Sai Ganesh Veeravalli
Sai Ganesh Veeravalli attended the ELLIS Winter School: AI for Earth System, Hazards & Climate Extremes in Athens, Greece an intensive and genuinely thought-provoking experience :
Rather than just new tools, what stood out most were a few shifts in how I think about AI in geoscience.
Trustworthy AI is now central to the field Several keynotes – from causal reasoning (Gustau Camps-Valls) to responsible AI (Pedram Ghamisi), uncertainty quantification (Alexander Brenning), and ethics (Mrinalini Kochupillai) – highlighted a clear direction: performance alone is no longer sufficient. Read more...