Article Written By: Johannes Mast (DLR), Dr. Marta Sapena (DLR)
We were happy to represent the MIGRAWARE project at this year’s Joint Urban Remote Sensing Event (JURSE) in Heraklion, Greece, between 17-19 May 2023. As the name suggests, the focus of this conference is on remote sensing of cities, both from a technical and applied perspective. We presented some results of our work within MIGRAWARE, which have been published in the proceedings of the conference (IEEE Xplore – Conference Table of Contents).
In the conference‘s special session “Urban remote sensing for the Global South”, Marta Sapena gave a presentation titled “Integrating multi-source remote sensing data for monitoring urban development in West Africa”, a research work developed within the MIGRAWARE project. The work demonstrates how we can better understand settlement growth and migration processes by mapping urban growth at a fine scale, and combining it with other information types, in this case, nighttime light emissions.
M. Sapena, J. N. Inkoom, E. T. Umaru, J. Mast, A. A. Okhimamhe and H. Taubenböck, “Integrating multi-source remote sensing data for monitoring urban development in West Africa” 2023 Joint Urban Remote Sensing Event (JURSE), Heraklion, Greece, 2023, doi: 10.1109/JURSE57346.2023.10144165.
Johannes Mast presented a poster titled “Linking remote sensing data and online engagement in flood events in Nigeria“. In this exploratory work about the floods which struck Nigeria in 2022, we found that online discourse and remotely-sensed information about the flood’s physical impact do not necessarily paint the same picture of a crisis event.
J. Mast, M. Sapena, C. Geiß and H. Taubenböck, “Linking remote sensing data and online engagement in flood events in Nigeria” 2023 Joint Urban Remote Sensing Event (JURSE), Heraklion, Greece, 2023, doi: 10.1109/JURSE57346.2023.10144130.
Beyond presenting and discussing our research work with a wider community of researchers, we gained knowledge about new datasets, new methods, and new ideas to apply to the project. The power and accessibility of remote sensing products continue to increase, a promising development considering the scale and complexity of global change which we seek to understand.
Altogether, it was a fruitful and inspiring event and we look forward to apply the ideas which we have gained within the MIGRAWARE project.