Talk in the SEED seminar series at KTH
Seminar series of the Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering (SEED) at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Local vs Global: Challenges in Geoinformatics and Earth observation to support sustainable development
In a globalized economy, complex international supply chains connect local environmental and social challenges to geographically distant regions. Consequently, implementing relevant regulatory initiatives to support sustainable development within a region will have localized impacts elsewhere. For example, metals to support digitalization and energy transition in the European Green Deal will cause impacts and pressure in mining regions outside the EU. Thus, regulatory initiatives must monitor and manage impacts within and outside its borders. Earth observation is the only viable data source to provide global information for sustainable resource management. In this talk, I will address research challenges in geoinformatics and Earth observation to produce trustworthy global information that is at the same time locally relevant. I will show that currently available global datasets do not provide reliable and locally relevant information because the algorithms used to extract information from EO are restricted to the availability of large volumes of ground samples. Solving the global vs local problem requires substantial research in geoinformatics to develop new methods to cope with data scarcity and produce relevant and accurate information to support global sustainability.