Overview MSc Research Topics

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

2D outlines or footprints of buildings are either generated from high resolution images or point cloud data.

M-GEO
ACQUAL

3D models such as Building information models (BIM) are valuable for industry for various planning purposes.

M-GEO
Robotics
ACQUAL

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly used within an Internet of Things (IoT) network where the

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES

Protected areas are useful governance tool to mitigate biodiversity loss and preserve threatened habitats and species.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

Global production, transportation, and consumption of oil can cause inevitable spills into the environment (typically from pipelines, oil wells, and storage facilities) cont

Cartography
M-GEO
STAMP

These days simple tools exist that allow everyone to make maps, and subsequently use social media to disseminate the maps, with can reach millions.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
PLUS

More and more cities are developing digital twins of their crucial public infrastructures.

M-GEO
M-SE
PLUS

Climate planning has been arising since the Paris Agreement [1]. However, the last data shows that the proposed goals are far from being reached in time [2;3].

Cartography
M-GEO
STAMP

Annotations in an interactive atlas environment will support the user to execute atlas tasks, and help them to better understand what they see in respect to the (carto)graphic representations used,

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

For years, MODIS images have been instrumental in divers environmental and ecological studies such as monitoring deforestation, land-us/land-cover (LULC) changes, agriculture and epidemiology.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

Green spaces are fundamental for the well-being of individuals and communities as they provide areas for recreation, which is essential for the quality of life in cities.

M-GEO
ACQUAL

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been a public health emergency of global concern since its outbreak in 2019/2020.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
PLUS

The decisions made on the spatial configurations and distributions in the built environments (urban or rural developments) directly affect the environment as well as the interests of various stakeh

M-GEO
ACQUAL

3D models such as Building information models (BIM) are valuable for industry for various planning purposes.

M-GEO
PLUS

Pastoralists and non-pastoralists in Sub Saharan Africa have been engaging in land use conflicts which are associated with environmental, climatic, political, economic and social

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES
PLUS

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates the global community must remove up to1000 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (GtCO2) by 2100 to limit warming to no more than 1.5°

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

Interest in the formal representation of citizen science comes from portals, platforms, and catalogues of citizen science projects; scientists using citizen science data for their research; and fun

M-GEO
ACQUAL

Sentinel-1, with a constellation of radar satellites, operates day and night, providing freely accessible, consistent, and time series SAR images of every part of the Earth.

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES

LAI is one of the most critical vegetation biophysical variables as well as remote sensing- enabled essential biodiversity variables due to the controlling role of green leaves in biological and ph

M-GEO
PLUS

Land or property tax is one of the oldest forms of taxation; it is relatively fair and it is not easy to hide properties.

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL
PLUS

The strong interaction between health and disaster risk reduction has been made explicit by the current pandemic crisis.

M-GEO
FORAGES
WCC

Farmers want to use less water to produce more food.

M-GEO
Robotics
ACQUAL

Object detection is a fundamental topic in computer vision. Recently, deep learning has become an effective method and achieved great success in object detection.

M-GEO
Robotics
ACQUAL

The estimation of depth from a single image have been a Computer Vision topic for decades.

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

Brazil is the biggest coffee productors in the world, with millions of hectares of plantations.

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL
FORAGES

Estimating aboveground biomass is essential for generating vegetation inventories and understanding carbon cycles.

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

An accurate method for automatically mapping deforested areas constitute an important tool to inform and enable deforestation containment policies.

M-GEO
ACQUAL

Aboveground forest biomass has fundamental role in carbon cycling, climate processes, and global warming.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

The climate in cities and metropolitan areas (i.e., urban climate) is often different from the climate in the surrounding rural areas due to the presence of buildings, pavement, a

M-GEO
M-SE

In general classes such as Buildings and Vegetation and Terrain are well classified. The classes Bridges and Water are more problematic, even for deep learning algorithms.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

To model air pollution in urban environments while accounting for urban forms using convolutional neural networks (CNN) or Vision Transformers (ViT), open access earth observation

M-GEO
Robotics

The problem of 3D spatial perception involves the real-time construction and maintenance of a comprehensive and actionable representation of the environment using sensor data and prior knowledge.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

Deep Neural Networks (DNN) is considered as a panacea for different problems in several application areas. But what about spatial modeling?

M-GEO
ACQUAL

The student will initially revise the existing literature on image matching algorithms using CNN as backbone.

M-GEO
WCC

High amounts of particles or harmful gases in the air damage the health of humans and ecosystems.

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES

The goal of this study is to detect and map bark beetle infestation in a temperate forest in Germany using DESIS hyperspectral satellite

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
WCC

In recent years, the Greater Horn of Africa has suffered from prolonged droughts, associated with forced migration and food and water security issues.

Cartography
GIMA
M-GEO
STAMP

Data (of any kind) relating to geographic entities such as municipalities, provinces or countries (which may be available for different moments in time), can be represented through maps, but also t

M-GEO
FORAGES
STAMP

ITC research staff from the GIP, PGM and NRS departments, in collaboration with CRIB have developed global maps that estimate

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

With the increasing availability of remotely sensed data, there is a pressing need to develop efficient and scalable methods for converting satellite images into useful information.

M-GEO
ACQUAL

Clouds usually represent a big problem for optical remote sensing. A wide range of works have been developed in producing efficient cloud detection algorithms.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL
PLUS

The digital twin (DT) (smart city/3D modelling) topic currently attracts the attention and interest of many cities, authorities, industrial and research organizations at national, European and inte

M-GEO
M-SE
WCC

Drought has wreaked havoc to human societies throughout history. Drought is usually caused by a multitude of factors starting from the deficit of precipitation when compared to climatic mean.

M-GEO
Robotics
ACQUAL

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly used within a Mobile Edge Computation (MEC) network where the UAV is made intelligent by

M-GEO
ACQUAL

Understanding the types of vegetation that composes the land cover on non-anthropic areas and the land use for anthropic areas is essential to understand ecosystems dynamics and the impacts of huma

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

Understanding the types of vegetation that composes the land cover on non-anthropic areas and the land use for anthropic areas is essential to understand e

M-GEO
M-SE
PLUS

The circular economy action plan issued by EU in 2020 is a key feature towards Sustainable Development, promoting all type of strategies for regional

M-GEO
M-SE
WCC

The past decades have seen rapid advancements in space-based monitoring of essential water cycle variables, providing products related to precipitation, evapotranspiration, and so

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES

ET is the water lost to the atmosphere through plant stomata during photosynthesis and from the surface following a wetting event.

M-GEO
WCC

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges that our society faces today and the current loss of biodiversity caused by human actions is re

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES

Thermal remote sensing is a type of passive remote sensing since that detects naturally emitted radiation. Most thermal remote sensing for vegetation conducted in the 8-14 μm wavelengths.

M-GEO
Robotics
ACQUAL

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly used by public and private organizations such as the Politie, Brandweer or Rijkswatersta

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

UN-Habitat estimates that over one billion people around the world live in slums, which are often located in hazard-prone areas.

M-GEO
ACQUAL

The phenomenon of urban heat islands generally refers to the heating of urban areas compared to their undeveloped surroundings.

M-GEO
M-SE
4D-EARTH

Real estate properties are fundamental assets for securing credit among individuals and companies alike.

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

With down-looking satellite sensors, our three-dimensional (3D) world is commonly represented with 2D remote sensing images.

M-GEO
WCC

Water resource management needs to consider a wide range of spatial scales and address a variety of problems, e.g.

Cartography
GIMA
M-GEO
STAMP

Origin-Destination (OD) flow maps are a popular topic in contemporary cartographic and GIS research because they may show interesting spatio-temporal patterns, but are difficult to render legibly.

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

Deep learning algorithms can achieve great accuracies, but there are also concerns about biases and generalizability to unseen data.

M-GEO
M-SE
4D-EARTH

Generative AI has been used in many applications such as text generation and image generation such as (chatgpt, dall-e etc.) but can they generate realisti

M-GEO
Robotics
ACQUAL

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are powerful flexible monitoring devices, and their data is increasingly us

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
PLUS
STAMP

The so-called Right to Light in Great Britain, the European standard EN 17037 “Daylight in Buildings”, and similar design codes or standards of good practice provide recommendations for ensuring th

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES

Sustainable production of food and other biomass-derived products needs checking if, indeed, no harm is done to biodiversity, our environment in general, or to people.

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

Climate data will be used to assess heat risks.

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

This study aims to develop methods that can be used to delineate pollution events.

M-GEO
ACQUAL

Access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services and associated health benefits are widely enjoyed in high-income countries , where centuries of investment in infrastruct

M-GEO
ACQUAL

Normally, building digital twins are based on data collected beforehand from one sensor mounted on an aerial or ground platform.

M-GEO
M-SE
4D-EARTH

Climate change leads to a increased frequency of extreme precipitation and prolonged drought period, both of which have a severe impact on the landslide in

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

Deep learning algorithms have gained increasing popularity in remote sensing due to their accuracy.

Cartography
GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

Individuals and the organisations in which they work need to cooperate in projects and research to withstand an increasing competition.

M-GEO
WCC

Understanding of the effect of climate change on ecosystems is of great importance.

M-GEO
M-SE
PLUS

Improved quality of life is one of the New Urban Agenda (NUA) underlined sectors to be incorporated "in every urban development or renewal policy and

M-GEO
M-SE
PLUS

Improved quality of life is one of the New Urban Agenda (NUA) underlined sectors to be incorporated "in every urban development or renewal policy and strategy" (UN-Habitat, 2017).

M-GEO
ACQUAL

Indoor scene understanding is important for tasks like indoor navigation and semantic mapping.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

In the realm of artificial intelligence (AI), the advancement of large language models (LLM) like GPT-4, the base model of ChatGPT, has revolutionized natural language processing.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL
PLUS

The digital twin (DT) (smart city/3D modelling) topic currently attracts the attention and interest of many cities, authorities, industrial and research organizations at national, European and inte

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

Impervious surfaces are the Earth’s surfaces covered with mainly anthropogenic and artificial structures, such as built-up areas, roads and streets, and parking lots.

M-GEO
M-SE
PLUS

Interactive Planning Support Systems (IPSS) implemented on a maptable are a promising way to involve professional stakeholders as well as citizens in participatory planning processes.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

A workflow is considered to be a combination of data and (software) operations.

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

Spanish PAZ, which was launched in February 2018, offers co-polarimetric (with HH and VV channel) SAR images with X-band and (down to) 11 days repeat cycle.

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL
FORAGES

Sufficient nutrition remains a major challenge for rural households in the Sub-saharan region of Africa.

Cartography
GIMA
M-GEO
STAMP

This project will have the student build multi-globe visualizations in one or more mediums: on desktop computer screens, in virtual reality or augmented reality.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

As a result of hardware miniaturization and ubiquitous internet access, there is a wealth of user- and sensor-generated geographic content available, from social media activity to private weather s

M-GEO
ACQUAL

Being freely available, weather- and sunlight-independent, Copernicus Sentinel-1 data are increasingly being used for a variety of remote sensing applications.

M-GEO
ACQUAL

Information on the spatial distribution of crops is of great importance for the sustainable management and development of agricultural practices and thus for national and global economic developmen

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

Humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross Red Crecent and Unicef use risk models to identify vulnerable populations and mitigate the affects of natural disasters.

M-GEO
Robotics
ACQUAL

Utilities form the essential infrastructure of a contemporary society, fulfilling fundamental requirements for both residents and industries.

M-GEO
FORAGES

The Mekong Delta in Vietnam experiences serious problems due to coastal erosion.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

Crop mapping plays an important role in agronomic planning and management both for farmers and policymakers. Satellite remote sensing sensors have become efficient tools for mapping croplands.

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES

Food insecurity is a big issue in eastern and southern Africa and projections are that this is going to get worse with climate change and variability.

M-GEO
FORAGES
PLUS

Good access to resources and opportunities is essential for sustainable development. Improving

GIMA
M-GEO
STAMP

Mapping the presence or abundance of an animal or plant species is a non-trivial challenge.  It often involves elaborate field surveys with strict data collection protocols and usually deep underst

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES

Monitoring forest dynamics is essential for identifying the area most at risk for forest degradation and de

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL
FORAGES

This topic is part of the ITC Space4Restoration project, which aims to develop remote sensing tools t

M-GEO
ACQUAL

Land use classification of urban area is one of the most important applications of remote sensing images. Urban management is generally in demand to account the dynamics of land uses.

M-GEO
Robotics
ACQUAL

UAVs are increasingly used to create 2D and 3D maps to support monitoring and emergency scenarios.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

Objective

To develop a deep learning model to estimate the timing of phenological events over large area

M-GEO
PLUS

Land administration in a modern and formal system is well defined with clear physical boundaries and legal aspects of a spatial unit, recorded in a proper database.

M-GEO
Robotics
ACQUAL

Neural Radiance Field (NeRF) stands as a category of neural networks adept at represent and render realistic 3D scenes environments using a set of 2D images.

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL
PLUS

The pursuit of economic growth, traditionally measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is increasingly being problematised for its effectiveness in enhancing societal well-being

M-GEO
M-SE
PLUS

Behind the many different data sources available to innovate geospatial technologies are large data infrastructures needed to produce and process geospatial data.

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES

Palm oil is an important vegetable oil.

GIMA
M-GEO
STAMP

Human onchocerciasis (river blindness) is part of the so-called Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) that jointly affect more than one billion people living in impoverished communit

GIMA
M-GEO
STAMP

Advances in AI enable new approaches to solve existing problems, but they also create new challenges especially concerning the veracity and validity of digital content.

GIMA
M-GEO
STAMP

Optimal performance of computations is one important promise that databases make to their user community.

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

So far, more than 6.5 million people have died from COVID-19, and still, there are around 1000 deaths per day.

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES
PLUS

Urban green spaces can provide a lot of benefits to residents, including fresh and cool air, protection from flooding or space to meet others or do s

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES

Farmers, agronomists, private enterprise and policy-makers need to know field conditions with sufficient early-warning.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

In cities, temperatures are often higher than in the surrounding areas and can also vary locally.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

As a result of hardware miniaturization and ubiquitous internet access, there is a wealth of user- and sensor-generated geographic content available, from social media activity to private weather s

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES

The goal of this study, as part of the larger BIOSPACE project, is to map and model leaf and canopy nitrogen content and their spatial va

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES

The goal of this study, as part of the larger BIOSPACE project, is to map and model Specific Leaf Area (SLA) and its spatial variation in

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

New and affordable sensors (e.g., Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense, Sensebox) have greatly increased the potential to collect finer-grained environmental information, especially on topics impacting on hum

M-GEO
WCC

The concept of nature conservation as well as ecosystem sustainability has received substantial attention of the human society, such is even more so recently given the dire IPCC warning about the a

M-GEO
PLUS

Many land administration and spatial planning organizations are undergoing processes of digitalization of their spatial data holdings, communication networks, and work flows.

M-GEO
ACQUAL

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) provide excellent opportunities for more efficient and detailed infrastructure monitoring.

M-GEO
Robotics
ACQUAL

This project aims to explore using monocular cameras in the real-time construction of 3D scene graphs in outdoor applications.

M-GEO
4D-EARTH

Many mineral assemblages that are interesting for providing raw materials for the energy transition (lithium, rare earth minerals) cannot be detected

M-GEO
Robotics
ACQUAL

In the past couple of years, Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) [1] and methods derived from it have become a popular choice for solving different tasks s

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES

Amazingly, the Dutch nature conservation monitoring system makes very little use of remote sensing.

M-GEO
Robotics
ACQUAL

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have found significant applications in road monitoring, offering a versatile and efficient solution for infrastructur

M-GEO
M-SE
WCC

In many countries, shortage of drinking water is a problem.

M-GEO
WCC

Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) data from Sentinel-1 satellites provides unprecedented opportunity to evaluate inter-annual flood characteristics, although consen

M-GEO
WCC

This study aims to assess the applicability of satellite rainfall estimates (SRE) in crop growth modelling by means of the Aquacrop model.

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

Spanish PAZ, which was launched in February 2018, offers co-polarimetric (with HH and VV channel) SAR images with X-band and (down to) 11 days repeat cycle.

M-GEO
ACQUAL

Data acquired from indoor environments contains a lot of valuable information about the assets and facilities.

M-GEO
M-SE
FORAGES

To inform policymakers about the agricultural landscapes and food production, accurate and timely monitoring of crop type is required.

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL
PLUS

Mapping slums in different urban environments across the Globe is extremely important for locating and prioritizing hotspots of urban poor for urgent climate action to combat the impact of cl

M-GEO
STAMP

The mechanism by which we observe a phenomenon that unfolds in space and time fundamentally determines what we can learn about that phenomenon.

M-GEO

Disaster risk is overall well understood, and many methods exist for risk analysis, decision support for risk reduction actions, and early warning, and to a lesser extent for early acti

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

The accurate prediction of crop yields is a critical element in ensuring global food security, managing agricultural markets and supporting the decision-making processes of farmers and

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

For a skyscraper to be stable, it must be built on a strong foundation. However, several factors such as persistent use, aging and deterioration, etc.

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

The growing public health concerns about ambient air quality such as particulate matter (PM) concentrations suggest the need for a holistic monitoring to guide interventions.

M-GEO
M-SE
WCC

The new Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite, launched in December 2022, aims to map Earth's water in unprecedented detail to help manage climate change and to shar

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

Geo-referenced time series are data describing the time-changing behavior of one or more attributes at fixed locations and consistent time intervals [1].

M-GEO
M-SE
PLUS

The goal of sustainable transport is to promote better and healthier ways for individuals and communities to meet their travel needs while reducing the negative social, environmental and economic i

M-GEO
M-SE
PLUS

A huge task is waiting to realize the global agenda in relation to tenure security as recognized by the sustainable development goals (SDGs) set by the UN.

M-GEO
4D-EARTH

Rocks and minerals do not change by day or by season. However, the environment in which remote sensing images are acquired changes continuously.

M-GEO
M-SE
PLUS

The world’s human population has been tripled during the past 70 years, from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 7.7 billion now (UN-Habitat).

M-GEO
M-SE
4D-EARTH
FORAGES

Vegetation is currently scarce on Greenland, and does not occur on the ice-sheet, as it grows around the edges.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

Although large language models (LLM) have been around for a while, the public release of ChatGPT demonstrated a quantum leap in the abilities of these models to respond to natural

M-GEO
M-SE
WCC

GLOFAS is an ensemble of 3 components: A Metrological Model and Forecast (Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) forecasts of the ECMWF IFS), A hydrological model (LISFLOOD) and a web

M-GEO
ACQUAL

The creation of 3D models of objects like buildings and other man-made structures is an important field of applications for city modelling, urban planning, cultural heritage, and many other a

M-GEO
M-SE
ACQUAL

The fusion of UAV-based and satellite-based data has emerged as a powerful approach for plant health monitoring in agriculture.

M-GEO
ACQUAL

Unmanned aircraft UAVs are mostly used for surveying in the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector because of their compact size, ease of movement, and the quantity of data

M-GEO
ACQUAL

When infrastructure companies refurbish asphalt, a road-marking inventory needs to be created in advance to allow for accurate road marking replacement.

M-GEO
M-SE
WCC

The droughts of 2018-2020 in the Netherlands created great social distress, induced huge economic damages in agricultural production, disrupted river navigation and damaged buildi

M-GEO
M-SE
WCC

Climate change is nowadays prominently present on the political and thus scientific agenda, which is reflected in the Dutch Delta-Programme for Spatial Adaptation (“Delta-Programma Ruimtelijke Adap

M-GEO
M-SE
PLUS

Student will use earth observation based data and techniques to understand urban socioeconomic patterns, and attempt to interpret these patterns by using physical metrics of urban morphology obtain

Cartography
GIMA
M-GEO
STAMP

Interactive computational notebooks are browser-based tools that support shared workflows, coding, data, and visualisations.

M-GEO
WCC

Understanding the hydrologic and energy cycles to enhance our meteorological and hydrologica

M-GEO
PLUS
STAMP

Environmental noise has been associated with increasing blood pressure, heart disease, and sleep disturbance, among other complaints.

M-GEO
ACQUAL

Explore how to enhance field exploration using our local environment with the digital tools available.

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
STAMP

To develop a model to estimate the timing of phenological events over large areas from time series of earth observation data using vision transformers, a fierce alternative to tra

GIMA
M-GEO
M-SE
WCC

Water level in lakes and rivers is a critical parameter to monitor for water managers. It captures the state of surface waters, and, if placed strategically, can be used in e.g.

M-GEO
M-SE
WCC

Aside from flooding, agricultural areas in flat terrain suffer from seasonal water logging after excessive precipitation.

M-GEO
M-SE
PLUS

More and more cities are developing digital twins of their crucial public infrastructures.

M-GEO
ACQUAL

Concept: Nipah, a deadly viral disease is confined only to a small pocket of Kerala.