Advisory Board and Editors Spatial & Geographic Information Science
Alessandro Frigeri
My research interest focuses on Planetary Science, Geoinformatics, and Geophysical data acquisition (both in the field and from remote sensing instruments), processing, and comparative analysis of datasets with different data models (e.g. topography, spectral and visible imagery and radar). I use and develop GIS tools for quantitative spatial analysis in my research activity.
I'm part of Scientific Teams of instruments onboard missions to Mars (ESA's Mars Express and NASA's MRO) and asteroids belt Vesta and Ceres (NASA's Dawn).
Andrea Ghermandi
I am an Associate Professor and Head at the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, and the director of the Natural Resources and Environmental Research Center at the University of Haifa in Israel. I am an alumnus of the Global Young Academy. I received a PhD in Analysis and Governance of Sustainable Development from the University of Venice (Italy) in 2008. An environmental engineer by training, my research spans over a range of fields including the valuation and mapping of ecosystem services and the passive crowdsourcing of social media data in environmental research. I have published >50 peer-reviewed scientific articles and contributed to high-profile international initiatives such as TEEB-The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, the UNEP/GEF Project for Ecosystem Services (ProEcoServ), and the Ecosystem Service Partnership.
Tilottama Ghosh
Dr. Tilottama Ghosh has ten years of experience with low light imaging data from the U.S. Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) data from 2013 onwards. Products generated include VIIRS Nightfire, VIIRS Boat Detection, VIIRS Nighttime Lights, and DMSP-OLS Nighttime Lights. Experience working with low light imaging data has included processing historic lunar cycle composites, monthly and annual cloud-free global mosaics of nighttime lights composites, creating metadata documenting generated data products, fulfilling data requests related to the nighttime lights products and the DMSP archive, providing training in the use and implementation of nighttime lights software to scientists and researchers, documenting DMSP and VIIRS algorithms and accomplishments through manuals, conference proceedings, and journal submissions. She has conducted many significant socio-economic research and analysis using DMSP and VIIRS nighttime lights, and prepared publishable materials. Her research interests include- socio-economic estimations using nighttime lights, studying sustainable growth of cities, urbanization and population growth.
Ioannis Gitas
Ioannis Gitas is a Professor at the Laboratory of Forest Management and Remote Sensing, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and an elected fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. His research has focused on remote sensing and GIS applications in environmental monitoring, with emphasis on forest fire management and land cover/land use mapping and change detection. He has been involved in various national and international projects and has long experience working as a consultant in GIS/RS issues for national and international organisations, as well as for the industry. Also, he has served as a project proposal reviewer for a number of national and international research organisations. Dr. Gitas received his PhD and M.Phil. degrees in GIS and Remote Sensing from the Department of Geography, Cambridge University, U.K., and a B.Sc. degree in Forestry and Natural Environment from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He is an Associate Editor of Remote Sensing and has edited special issues for a number of high impact factor journals. In addition, he has substantial experience in organising international workshops and conferences. Ioannis Gitas is currently the Chair of the Special Interest Group on Forest Fires of the European Association of Remote Sensing Laboratories (EARSeL, FFSIG), the FAO Forest Resources Assessment - Remote Sensing Survey contact point for Greece, and is a member of the GOFC-GOLD Fire Implementation Team.
Robert J Hijmans
Robert Hijmans is a professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis. Prior to joining UC Davis, he held positions at the International Potato Center (Peru), the International Rice Research Institute (Philippines) and at the UC Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. His research focuses on spatial data analysis in biodiversity, agriculture, and health, and he has developed widely used software and databases to support such work. He has a PhD in Production Ecology from Wageningen University (Netherlands).
Jochen Horstmann
Jochen Horstmann received the Diploma in physical oceanography (Dipl.-Oz.) and the Ph.D. in earth sciences (Dr. rer. nat.) from the University of Hamburg, Germany, in 1997 and 2002, respectively. He was with GKSS Research Center, Geesthacht, Germany, where he joined the Coupled Model Systems group in 1995 and has been a Research Scientist with the Institute for Coastal Research since 2002. Since 2007 he is adjunct Professor at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, USA.
In 2002, he was a Visiting Scientist with the Applied Physics Laboratory of the John Hopkins University, Laurel, MD, and with the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service from NOAA, Washington, DC. In 2004 and 2005, he was a Visiting Scientist with the Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing of the University of Miami, FL. From 2008 to 2013, he was a Senior Remote Sensing Scientist with Nato Undersea Research Center in La Spezia, Italy. Since 2013 he is head of the department of Radar Hydrography at the Institute of Coastal Research of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, Germany.
He has a wide experience in the field of radar remote sensing of ocean wind, waves, and currents and has published more than 55 scientific papers in international peer-reviewed journals. His main research interests are the development of applications for radar-based sensors with particular focus on ocean surface and subsurface processes.
Cho-ying Huang
Cho-ying Huang is a professor in the Department of Geography at National Taiwan University. His research interests include global ecology, terrestrial biogeochemistry and remote sensing of the environment.
Bo Huang
Dr. Bo Huang is a Professor with the Department of Geography and Resource Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he is also the Associate Director of Institute of Space and Earth Information Science and the Director of MSc Program in GeoInformation Science. Prior to this, he held faculty positions at University of Calgary (Geomatics Engineering), Canada and National University of Singapore (Civil Engineering). His research interests are broad, covering most aspects of Geographical Information Science (GIScience), specifically: satellite image fusion for environmental monitoring, spatial/spatio-temporal statistics for land cover/land use change modeling, spatial optimization for sustainable urban and land use planning, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), and web/wireless GIS for location-based services. Dr. Huang has published extensively in the field of GIScience, including over 130 refereed international journal articles, and serves as Executive Editor of Annals of GIS (Taylor & Francis) and Asia-Pacific Regional Editor of International Journal of Geographical Information Science (Taylor & Francis). He also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Comprehensive GIS, a three volume landmark GIS book to be published by Elsevier (Oxford). Currently he is exploring along the line of spatiotemporal data analytics, convinced that this new paradigm will revolutionize the way how geospatial data are integrated, analyzed and utilized in the future.
Rodolfo Jaffé
I`m interested in inter-disciplinary approaches, comprising population and community ecology, genomics and spatial statistics, to understand how the alteration of natural habitats influences biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services.
Mykola Karabiniuk
I work as an Associate professor of the Department of Physical Geography and Efficient Environmental Management of Uzhhorod National University. The scientific degree PhD (Geography) with a specialty in physical geography, geophysics and geochemistry of landscapes was awarded for the defense of a dissertation at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, which is devoted to the features of landscape organization and the efficiency of using the highlands of the Chornogora massif of the Ukrainian Carpathians.
I specialize in landscape diversity and evolutionary development of mountain systems, mapping and geoinformation analysis of the structure and properties of geocomplexes to determine the geoecological situation, as well as the problems of anthroposis of landscapes and efficient use of nature. For scientific achievements in the field of geoecology and the applied significance of the results of the study of the highlands of the Ukrainian Carpathians to solve environmental problems of the Danube region in 2021 I was awarded the Danubius Young Scientist Award. In 2025, based on the decision of the Certification Board of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, the academic title of Associate Professor of the Department of Physical Geography and Rational Nature Management was awarded. I am also a full member of the Ukrainian Geographical Society.
Nikos Koutsias
Nikos Koutsias is an Associate Professor at the Department of Environmental and Natural Resources Management, University of Patras, Greece, where he gives courses about remote sensing, GIS and spatial analysis. He obtained his diploma degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Aegean, his M.Sc. degree in Environmental and Renewable Resources, Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania, and his Ph.D. from the Department of Forestry and Natural Environment, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He held a post doctorate position at Geographic Information Systems division (GIS) in the Department of Geography, University of Zurich.
He has been working in the field of remote sensing, GIS and spatial analysis with special emphasis on wildland fires, forestry, ecology and other natural hazards for the last 25 years. He has participated in national and European projects and is the recent recipient of a Marie Curie Individual Scholarship.
Anne Kuhn
Anne Kuhn holds a PhD in Environmental Science from the University of Rhode Island, and has expertise in the field of spatial statistics and developing approaches for evaluating the relative risks from chemical and non-chemical stressors on spatially structured populations of wildlife species across. Anne develops and evaluates watershed indicators to reflect and predict aquatic condition in lakes, streams and estuaries. Her current research involves evaluating key intrinsic factors controlling watershed physical processes and connectivity, and quantifying watershed-level stressors (e.g., land use, stable isotopes of nitrogen and carbon, nutrient loads, climate change, etc.) that influence the condition and integrity of water bodies within watersheds.