I am a geographer and holding a chair in Infrastructuring Urban Futures at the Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-Information Management department at the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation. Prior to my appointment at ITC in 2017 I worked at the Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies of the University of Amsterdam (the NL) in various positions, ranging from postdoctoral researcher to Associate Professor. I obtained my PhD in Physical Geography from Utrecht University, the Netherlands. I was vice-dean research of the Faculty ITC 2020-2024.

I am holding the chair Infrastructuring Urban Futures in the Research theme PLUS – People, Land and Urban Systems. 

The chair analyses past and present developments of urban processes, and develops scientific methods, approaches and tools to sketch, simulate and analyse urban futures in a collaborative planning environment. The term infrastructuring emphasizes the important relationship between urban development, infrastructures and services (e.g. transport, energy, water, telecommunication, etc.), and it expresses the need to rethink and innovate the way cities are managed and developed. The pressure on urban planners to re-invent their practices raises the question of how research can engage with, and participate in, the development of new urban planning practices which address issues of urban sustainability and the tension between efficiency and inequality. Therefore, the chair investigates how urban governance actors (state, corporates, citizens, academia) develop, organize and practice access to urban infrastructure (transport, energy, water, sewage, etc) and how Geo-T can enhance the planning of and access to urban infrastructures balancing sectorial and social priorities. It combines quantitative, spatial (GIS and Remote Sensing techniques) and qualitative methods and employs a multi-stakeholder perspective to generate information and knowledge from different data sources in urban areas and investigate its use in urban governance and planning processes. 

My specific research topics are:

• Urban infrastructures and infrastructuring
• Urban planning support
• Urban poverty and spatial inequalities
• Mapping and analyzing urban deprivations / slum areas
• Urbanisation patterns and processes
• Urban public spaces
• Smart urbanism and urban lifestyles
• Nature-based solutions
• Urban remote sensing
• Geo-technologies and digital technologies
• Geographic information analysis and spatial knowledge
• Participatory mapping / qualitative GIS

Currently I am involved in the following research projects:

2024-2027: R-MAP Mapping, understanding, assessing and predicting the effects of remote working arrangements in urban and rural areas (www.r-map.eu)

Before I was involved in:

2022-23: Twinning for climate-resilient urban solutions (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam – University of Twente Partnership)

2022-2023: Codimap Co-Designing an Inclusive Collaborative Mapping Tool with People with Disabilities (Digital Society-Team Science, the Netherlands; 2022-2023)

2021-2023: Towards a Geo-citizen Science Hub (UT-ITC Ingenuity investment programme)

2019-2022: INECIS Informal Economies and Creative Industry strategies - Governance arrangements, socio-spatial dynamics and informal economies in urban kampongs in Indonesia

INECIS investigates the relationship between the informal economies of kampongs and formal creative industries strategies, and how these impact the spatial, social and economic development of kampongs. It is funded by NWO-wotro (Indonesia-The Netherlands Cooperation).

2016-2020: A New Urban Epoch? Alternative ways to measure urbanization using VHR remote sensing data

This PhD project explores the potential of Very High Resolution satellite images to research urbanization processes and patterns of small towns at the rural-urban transition and provide alternative measures and conceptualizations of contemporary urbanization. 

2016-2019: CODALoop - Community Data-Loops for energy-efficient urban lifestyles

CODALoop aims at enabling behavioural change in energy use through the design, implementation and assessment of learning and behavioural adaptation feedback loops, supported by a web-based platform through which qualitative and quantitative data are shared.

More information at: http://aissr.uva.nl/research/externally-funded-projects/sites/content13/codaloop/codaloop.html 

2016-2019: DynaSlum: Data Driven Modelling and Decision Support for Slums

DynaSlum processes very high-resolution remote sensing images and builds high-resolution agent-based models that can describe the growth dynamics of slums in Bangalore. – More information at: http://www.dynaslum.com 

2014-2018: Inclusive partnerships and innovation platforms for sustainable landscapes and greater food sovereignty among tree crop farmers in Ghana and South Africa

The related PhD project that I supervise within this project focuses on the effects of tree-crop farming on the mosaic landscape employing remote-sensing based land use change detection as well as participatory GIS. More information at: https://inclusivevcc.wordpress.com

2014-2018: Sound and the city: The nature of the interaction between patterns of human activity and sound in public spaces

This PhD project investigates how activity influences the way how people interpret and evaluate the auditory environment of urban public spaces and how the auditory environment of an urban public spaces affords particular activities in these spaces.

Older projects:

Co-editing the book on Geographies of Urban Governance: http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319212715

SIM-City project on agent-based complex network system to interactively explore socio-economic scenarios that can support decision makers of large urban areas, notably Bangalore in India. This project is closely related to Dynaslum.

The European project chance2sustain researching how governments and citizens in cities with differing patterns of urban economic growth make use of participatory (or integrated) spatial knowledge management to direct urban governance towards more sustainable development. http://www.chance2sustain.eu

SII: Investigating the role of spatial information infrastructures for tackling urban poverty in Indian cities

Regiomonitor Amsterdam: Setting up a regional monitoring system for the region of Amsterdam

GETS -A European research network for the application of Geomorphology and Environmental Impact Assessment to Transport Systems.

I am supervising the following PhD projects

Urban transportation

• Mark Brussel - Measuring socio-spatial equity in transport, India and South Africa
• Abdullh Banger - A GIS based approach towards sustainable transportation planning in Saudi Arabian cities

Urban settlements / public space / interactive tools

• Zhen He - Formality, informality and place-making in urban settlements: Xi’an, China
• Udipta Boro, Automated Urban Video Surveillance for A Caring City? The Case of India’s Safe City Project, India
• Shubham Mishra - Modelling Cultural Heritage for Urban Planning: Creating Digital Twin of Shahjahanabad / Old Delhi, India'
• Debbie Oyeku - The institutionalisation of planning support systems (PSS) in the planning process
• Ivan L. Cárdenas-León. Digital Twins: A Game-Changer in Improving Spatial Planning?
• Rodrigoandres Morales Ortega Digital twin framework for urban control drainage system: the case of Enschede, the Netherlands(Engineering Doctorate)
• Isaac Olouch - FRAME-PRO: Framework for the Responsible and Accountable Mapping of Deprived Urban Areas (will defend in April 2025)
• Maxwell Owusu, A scalable and transferable approach to map urban deprivation using low-cost tools and geospatial data
• Emmanuel Adugbila - Involuntary resettlement under compulsory land acquisitions for infrastructural development: Evaluating the resettlement implementation process and its impacts on receiving communities

Urban / regional resilience

• Vhalinavho Khavhagali - Climate change adaption in South Africa
• Patrick Eneche - Geospatial Simulation of Urban Surface Warming in Major Landscape Characters of Nigeria and Its Implications for Strategic Green Infrastructure Planning
• Paula Presser de Santana - Nature-based solutions as an innovative strategy for creating climate shelter in schoolyards
• Akshay Anand - Urban Lake Sustainability - Governance and Dynamics of Ecological Frameworks
• Vidit Kundu – Exploring the spatial diffusion and knowledge production dynamics of the clean energy sector and its resilience to exteral economic shocks
• Isaac Besarra – Role of humanitarian actors to facilitate sustainable reconstruction processes of hazard-affected communities

Earlier, I have supervised the following PhD projects

• Christine Richter (2014), Digital transformations in Indian cities: between paper list and GIS map
• Tara van Dijk (2014), Sub-altern Urbanism in India Beyond the Mega-City slum
• Monika Kuffer (2017), Spatial patterns of deprivation in cities of the global south in very high-resolution imagery
• Kirstin Conti (2017), Norms in multi-level groundwater governance and sustainable development
• Tara Saharan (2018), Livelihood trajectories in sub-standard settlements in Durban, South Africa and Chennai, India
• Guowei Lyu (2019) Transit oriented development and its effects: Exploring relationships between TOD, accessibility and labor productivity in Beijing, China
• Edda Bild (2019) Understanding the urban auditory experience: linking uses, users, and environments 
• Beatrix Pineda Revilla (2020) From efficiency to decency - Cultivating energy needs in urban communities, Amsterdam, the NL 
• Robbin-Jan van Duijne (2021) - India's emergent urban formations
• Liliana Miranda Sara (2021) Knowledge building in configuring metropolitan water governance  - Water-related climate risk scenarios, governance networks, concertacion processes and territorialities in Lima, Peru
• Rosa Aguilar (2022) Co-designing planning support tools for stakeholder engagement in collaborative spatial planning processes(role: promotor)
• Kwabena Asuboteng (2022) Expanding tree-crop farming - An integrated socio-spatial analysis in a transitioning mosaic landscape in Ghana
• Fenna Hoefsloot (2022) Knowledge Infrastructures for Just Urban Futures, Lima, Peru
• Sergio Alvarado Vazquez (2024) - Infrastructuring public spaces through social participation, using technology as a support system in Mexico 
• Jati Protomo (2024) – The interplay between uncertainties, transferability and policy making in RS-based slum- mapping, Jakarta, Indonesia