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Expert Interviews

Who is behind the science? After each event organized by the Open-Earth-Monitor project, we ask researchers to share their stories and opinions about their work and potential implications.

Global Workshop 2024

Organized by OpenGeoHub foundation in collaboration with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the 3rd edition of the Open-Earth-Monitor Global Workshop brought together over 100 experts in geospatial data to showcase advanced Earth Observation tools designed to support the development and implementation of European climate policies. See the webpage for more detail. 


Sarah Carter is research associate at WRI’s Global Forest Watch. In this interview, Sarah highlights the importance of the Open-Earth-Monitor project, and discusses its outreach and potential by drawing comparisons with the World Resource Institute’s Global Pasture Watch platform.


Mark Dowell is Senior Scientific Officer and Project Leader for Scientific and Technical Support to the Copernicus Programme at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. In this interview, Mark discusses the impact of the Open-Earth-Monitor project on European climate policies, comparing key collaborations between Copernicus and international initiatives aimed at improving the usability and impact of EO data in policy-making.


Inge Jonckheere is Head of Green Solutions Division at the European Space Agency (ESA), ESRIN (Rome). The Interview focuses on open data, open science and open platforms, exploring how the Open-Earth-Monitor project is contributing to the goal of having more FAIR and openly accessible data in the field of Earth Observation.


Paola De Salvo works as an Information Technology Officer coordinating GEOSS Platform (GEOSS Common Infrastructure) Operations Group at the Earth Observations (GEO) Secretariat. In this interview, Paola explores the Open-Earth-Monitor project’s contribution on reaching the GEO objectives, further discussing the project’s innovative work on implementing Open EO Knowledge.


Daniel Loos is a Data scientist, bioinformatician and full stack engineer at the Max-Planck-Institut for Biogeochemie. In this interview, Daniel discusses the Open-Earth-Monitor project and its potential in developing a unified global index system, also considering other projects, like the Discrete Global Grid Systems, in exploring today’s contribution to spatial statistics and global geospatial monitoring.

Global Workshop 2023

Organized by OpenGeoHub foundation in collaboration with Eurac Research, the Open-Earth-Monitor Global Workshop 2023 will bring together European and global actors in the field of open-source Earth Observation applications in policy, business, research and for society. See the webpage for more detail. 

Gilberto Camara is a Researcher on Geoinformatics, Land Use Change, and Spatial Data Science. Former Director of INPE/Brazil (2005-12) and of Group on Earth Observations (2018-21). During the Global Workshop 2023, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.
Joaquin van Peborgh is the Director of Product at OpenEarth Foundation. During the Global Workshop 2023, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.

Julia Wagemann (PhD) is an independent consultant in the Earth Observation domain who works across strategy, user engagement, and training of Big Earth Data and cloud-based services. She initiated and co-founded the professional network Women+ in Geospatial to make the geospatial community more diverse and equal. During the Global Workshop 2023, she was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.

Alessandro Cescatti is a senior researcher and the Directorate for Sustainable Resources at the European Commission’ Joint Research Center. During the Global Workshop 2023, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.

Lindsey Sloat is a Research Associate with the World Resources Institute's Land and Carbon Lab. She focuses on global monitoring data for agricultural lands - including both croplands and grazing lands - and applying those data to inform land use, land management, and environmental impact under a changing climate. During the Global Workshop 2023, she was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.

Science Webinars

The Open-Earth-Monitor project, funded by the EU Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, organizes monthly science webinar hosting two researchers working with Earth Observations, geospatial environmental data, monitoring networks and alert systems and their applications.

From 2023

Martijn Witjes is a PhD candidate at OpenGeohub Foundation, focusing on large-scale spatiotemporal land cover modeling. Following his presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.

Joaquin van Peborgh is Director of Product at OpenEarth Foundation. Following his presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.

Paolo Filippucci (PhD) is a research fellow at the Hydrology group of the Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection (IRPI) of Italian National Research Council (CNR). Following this presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.

Quentin Groom is the lead of the Biodiversity Informatics team at Meise Botanic Garden in Belgium, and part of the B-cubed project. Following his presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.

Dr. Joan Masó (m) is a Principal investigator of CREAF leading specialized group on geospatial interoperability, GIS, remote sensing. Following his presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.
Peter A. Strobl is a Senior Scientist at European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy. Following his presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.
Peter Zellner is a geographer with a focus on geoinformatics, remote sensing and their application to environmental topics. Adhering to openness in research, data and software, he is involved with the ADO Project (Alpine Drought Observatory), led by Eurac Research. Following his presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.
Florian Franziskakis has been working at the GEO Secretariat since 2019 where he was involved in the technical development of the GEO Knowledge Hub, and is now coordinating in situ related activities in GEO. Following his presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.
Dr. Diego Soto Gómez is a postdoctoral researcher in the field of soil science, with expertise in areas such as soil physics and microbiology, tomography, image analysis and hydrology. Currently, he conducts his research at the University of Vigo (UVigo). Following his presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.
Edzer Pebesma leads the spatiotemporal modelling lab at the Institute for Geoinformatics of the University of Münster. He is author of the book “Spatial Data Science: With applications in R” which appeared in May this year in print and is entirely available online on https://r-spatial.org/book/. Edzer is one of the initiators of openEO, a fresh approach to working with Earth observation data cubes in the cloud, and is an active contributor to the R-spatial community. Following this presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.
Felix Cremer has PhD study on time series analysis of hypertemporal Sentinel-1 radar data. He currently works at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry on the development of the JuliaDataCubes ecosystem in the scope of the NFDI4Earth project. The JuliaDataCubes organisation provides easy to use interfaces for the use of multi dimensional raster data. Following this presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.
Luca Brocca is Director of Research at the National Research Council, Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection of (CNR-IRPI) in Perugia. His main research interest lies in the development of innovative methods for exploiting satellite observations (soil moisture, rainfall, river discharge) for hydrological applications including floods, landslides, rainfall, droughts, irrigation, and water resources management. Following this presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.

Prof. Gordon Blair is the Head of Environmental Digital Strategy at UKCEH. Following this presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.

Prof. Alber Sánchez is a geoinformatician and researcher at the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil. Following this presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.
Davide has a background in electronic engineering, computer science, computational electromagnetism, brain modeling, remote sensing and environmental modeling. Following his presentation at the Science Webinar, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.

From 2024

Prof. Grégory Duveiller is the Project Leader at the Department of Biogeochemical Integration (BGI) of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry. Following this presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.
Prof. Gregory Giuliani is the Head of the Digital Earth Unit and Swiss Data Cube Project Leader at GRID-Geneva of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Geneva’s Institute for Environmental Sciences. Following this presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.
Steffen Fritz is a Program Director of the Strategic Initiatives Program and a principal research scholar in the Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability (NODES) Research Group of the IIASA Advancing Systems Analysis Program. Currently he is leading the development of the new Picture Pile Platform, which is funded by an ERC Proof of Concept Grant. Following this presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.


Linda See is a principal research scholar in the Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability (NODES) Research Group of the IIASA Advancing Systems Analysis Program. As part of the NODES group she works with the Geo-Wiki team on crowdsourcing of land cover data, quality assurance of crowdsourced data, and community building. Following this presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.


Simone Sabbatini is a Researcher at the Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Change (CMCC), where he is involved in the activities of the Ecosystem Thematic Center (ETC), a facility of the Integrated Carbon Observatory System Research Infrastructure (ICOS-RI). Following this presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.

Dr. Jędrzej Bojanowski, leads the Data Science in Earth Observation department at CloudFerro, a company providing cloud computing infrastructures and satellite data repositories such as Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem - the main access point to satellite data of Copernicus Programme, and CREODIAS – its commercial segment. Following this presentation, he was asked a few questions by OEMC’s Working Package 8 OpenGeoHub’s communication experts.