Working with spatial data has never been so exciting. Manifold software solutions and data sets have emerged. These are increasingly available through open source initiatives.
However, spatial data analysis requires more than handy software functunality and data formalization. It also requires the knowledge of various spatial concepts and the awareness of methodological pitfalls. Thus, dealing with geospatial datasets requires what we want to foster, namely critical spatial thinking.
Therefore we provide blogposts, tutorials and literature in both English and German - often inspired by great GIS experts and data scientists - introducing a large variety of tools for spatial data analysis using free and open source software, such as R or QGIS. In doing so, we would like to constantly point out what it means to think spatially.
Nils is a research assistant and PhD candidate at the chair of physical geography of the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg. His research focuses on climate change and climate vulnerability in the regional and local context, especially the Trinational Metropolitan Region Upper Rhine (TMRUR) and (Southwest) Germany. He uses indicator and GIS based methods for the quantitative evaluation of climatic vulnerability.
His teaching focuses on applied geospatial processing, analysis and visualisation as well as statistical methods with open source software such as QGIS and R(Studio).
M.Sc. Geography of Global Change, 2018
University of Freiburg
Geography & International Forestry, 2015
University of Freiburg
Already as a student, Rafael has carried out research in Thailand and Ghana in the field of development research. Thereafter as research assistant at the chair of physical geography of the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg his regional and content focus has shifted, but his methodical approaches to the GIS-based analysis of spatial phenomena have remained constant.
Currently, he is teaching a series of lectures and seminars in field of GIScience. In his Phd work he asks about the added value of a complementary use of ambient geospatial information or volunteered geographic information and official weather data in the context of Citizen Science. To retrieve climatic related content he uses methods of crowdharvesting, crowdsourcing and geocoding.
M.Sc. Geography of Global Change, 2015
University of Freiburg
B.Sc. Geography & Landscape management and nature conservation, 2012
University of Freiburg