Benjamin Herfort

Research Interests

• volunteered geographic information (VGI)
• crowdsourcing geographic information
• geoinformation systems for disaster management and humanitarian aid
• integration of authoritative and non-authoritative datasets

Projects

• Open Flood Risk Map: A decision support system based on user-generated spatial data for communities in support of emergency response planning in flood management
• 3D-MAPP: 3D-MicroMapping of Big 3D Geo-Datasets in the Web
• Crowd FDA – Crowdsourcing for Forensic Disaster Analysis

Curriculum Vitae

• since 2016: Research Assistant, GIScience Research Group, Heidelberg University
• 07/2014: Bachelor of Science, Geography, Heidelberg University
• since 2013: Student Assistant, GIScience Research Group, Heidelberg University

Publications

Journals:

• Herfort, B., Lautenbach, Porto de Albuquerque, S. J., Anderson, J., Zipf, A. (2023): A spatio-temporal analysis investigating completeness and inequalities of global urban building data in OpenStreetMap, Nature Communications volume 14, Article number: 3985
• Ullah T, Lautenbach S, Herfort B, Reinmuth M, Schorlemmer D. (2023): Assessing Completeness of OpenStreetMap Building Footprints Using MapSwipe. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information. 12(4):143. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi12040143
• Herfort, B., Lautenbach, S., Porto de Albuquerque, J., Anderson, J., Zipf, A. (2021): The evolution of humanitarian mapping within the OpenStreetMap community. Scientific Reports 11, 3037 (2021).
  DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-82404-z
• Porto de Albuquerque, J., B. Herfort, A. Brenning, A. Zipf (2015): A Geographic Approach for Combining Social Media and Authoritative Data towards Improving Information Extraction for Disaster Management: A Study on the Twitter usage in the River Elbe Flood of June 2013. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, volume and issue pending, pp. pending. Taylor & Francis. DOI: 10.1080/13658816.2014.996567.

Conferences:

• ASSIS, L. F. F. G., HERFORT, B., STEIGER, E., HORITA, F. E. A., ALBUQUERQUE, J. P. (2015). Geographical prioritization of social network messages in near real-time using sensor data streams: an application to floods. XVI Brazilian Symposium on Geoinformatics (GEOINFO). Campos do Jordão, SP, Brazil.
• Assis, L. F. F. G.; Herfort, B.; Steiger, E.; Horita, F. E. A.; Albuquerque, J. P. (2015): A geographic approach for on-the-fly prioritization of social-media messages towards improving flood risk management. Accepted for 4th Brazilian Workshop on Social Network Analysis and Mining (BraSNAM). Recife, Brazil.
• HERFORT, B., ECKLE, M., ALBUQUERQUE, J. P., ZIPF, A. (2015). Towards assessing the quality of volunteered geographic information from OpenStreetMap for identifying critical infrastructures. ISCRAM 2015 – 12th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Kristiansand, Norway.
• Schelhorn, S., Albuquerque, J.P., Zipf, A., Leiner, R. & Herfort, B. (2014): Identifying Elements at Risk from OpenStreetMap: The Case of Flooding. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) 2014, State College, Pennsylvania.
• Herfort, B., Albuquerque, J. P., Schellhorn, S. & Zipf, A. (2014): Exploring the geographical relations between social media and flood phenomena to improve situational awareness: A study about the River Elbe Flood in June 2013. 17th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science: Connecting a Digital Europe through Location and Place.
• Herfort, B., Schelhorn, S. Albuquerque, J.P. & Zipf, A. (2014): Does the spatiotemporal distribution of tweets match the spatiotemporal distribution of flood phenomena? A study about the River Elbe Flood in June 2013. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) 2014, State College, Pennsylvania. USA.