GIScience / Geoinformatics Research Group

The GIScience Research Group is engaged in innovative basic and applied research at the interface between geography and the computational sciences. We thereby focus on the investigation of user-generated geographical content (VGI, Crowdsourcing, Citizen Science), for which we develop innovative methods and analytical approaches.
More specifically, our thematic focuses are on volunteered geographic information (VGI), big spatial data analytics, smart mobility and humanitarian aid, such as disaster management.
Through the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology (HeiGIT gGmbH) at Heidelberg University, we have the opportunity to translate our research work into practical solutions.
In addition, we support our institute's study programmes in geography with numerous courses on relevant GI methods that allow our students to formally specialize in geoinformatics.
Please note our vacancies.
Latest News
News from our daily work can be found at giscienceblog.uni-heidelberg.de (also available as RSS-Feed). You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date.
HeiGIT will present its software “ohsome quality analyst” (OQT) at the FOSSGIS Conference in Berlin this week. In the demo session, Benjamin Herfort will show the numerous possibilities of the tool and how everyone can use OQT to evaluate completeness, level of detail, currentness and more in just a few steps. Join him on Thursday […]
We are excited to invite you to the official launch of the Sketch Map Tool! The Sketch Map Tool is an easy-to-use, open-source and free-of-charge tool which facilitates community mapping. You can use it to collect local spatial knowledge with pen and paper with an OpenStreetMap in the background. With the Sketch Map Tool, you […]
Welche Gebäude sind nach einem Erdbeben am schwersten beschädigt? Welche Gegenden haben keinen Zugang zu Gesundheitseinrichtungen? Wie verändert sich die Routenplanung und somit die Notfallversorgung, wenn bestimmte Straßen und Brücken nicht nutzbar sind? Das Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology gGmbH (HeiGIT) arbeitet seit einigen Jahren mit dem Deutschen Roten Kreuz (DRK) und mit dem Deutschen Zentrum für […]
On February 6, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck southern Türkiye at 4:17 a.m. This is Türkiye’s most powerful earthquake recorded since 1939. The Government of Türkiye has since issued a Level 4 alarm, calling for international assistance. The quake also heavily impacted north-west Syria, a region where 4.1 million people depend on humanitarian assistance already […]
One of the contributions showcased by the HeiGIT/GeoScience team in last year’s Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) 2022 conference in Florence (Italy) was Moritz Schott, Sven Lautenbach, Leonie Großchen, and Alexander Zipf’s novel paper “OpenStreetMap Element Vectorisation: A Tool for High Resolution Data Insights and its Usability in the Land-use and Land-cover […]
A new dataset of UAV and terrestrial laser scanning point clouds of snow-on and snow-off conditions at a Black Forest site (Hundseck, 48.643°N, 8.228°E) was published open access: Winiwarter, L., Anders, K., Battuvshin, G., Menzel, L. & Höfle, B. (2023): UAV laser scanning and terrestrial laser scanning point clouds of snow-on and snow-off conditions of […]
Are you a highly motivated individual who loves designing and developing machine learning and deep learning systems? Do you want to use your machine learning expertise for the benefit of society and the environment? Do you want to improve the availability and quality of geospatial data and further develop geoinformatics methods used for open, non-profit […]
If you’re on the job market or know someone who is, check out this exciting new opening from our partners at GIScience. The offer is included as text below. You are interested in enhancing methods for analyzing & improving OpenStreetMap data? You are an experienced Spatial Data Scientist innovating geoinformatics methods & workflows? You have […]
Featured Image: Road network analysis for the driving profiles. A Normal conditions before the flood event. B Evolution of scores after the floods induced by Cyclone Idai. The lower row shows a close-up of the area surrounding the city of Dondo The ability of disaster response, preparedness, and mitigation efforts to assess the loss of physical access to health […]
An approach for automatic characterization of surface activities from large 4D point clouds is presented in a new paper by Daan Hulskemper et al. in collaboration between the 3DGeo research group and the departments of Geoscience and Remote Sensing and Coastal Engineering at TU Delft. Hulskemper, D., Anders, K., Antolínez, J. A. Á., Kuschnerus, M., […]
Featured Photo: Ohsome dashboard interface for Heidelberg, Germany. In the words of Confucius, “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” As we release OSHDB (OpenStreetMap History Database) Version 1.0, we look back at versions 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, and all the other small improvements to our historical OpenStreetMap database as the […]
Pictures of the Group
In Memoriam Peter Meusburger

On 18 December 2017, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Peter Meusburger died far too soon. We mourn for a great scientist, teacher and colleague. In the mid 90s he implemented the first GIS pool at Heidelberg University and started GIS related research. He will not be forgotten. ((Message of the University)