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-hd.de (also available as RSS-Feed). You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date.
Our forest laser scanning dataset collected in the frame of the SYSSIFOSS project is now openly available through the PANGAEA Data Publisher: Weiser, H., Schäfer, J., Winiwarter, L., et al. (2021): Terrestrial, UAV-borne and airborne laser scanning point clouds of central European forest plots, Germany, with extracted individual trees and manual forest inventory measurements. PANGAEA, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.933426 Until [...]
Die aktuelle Flut in Deutschland hat zahlreiche Straßen in den betroffenen Gebieten zerstört oder temporär unpassierbar gemacht. HeiGIT arbeitet an freien und offenen, auf Geodaten-basierten Lösungen für die humanitäre Hilfe. Hierzu zählen insbesondere Routenplanung unter Berücksichtigung aktueller Katastrophendaten wie z.B. Überflutungsgebiete und zerstörter [...]
Our work on “Time Series-Based Coastal Surface Change Analysis using Hourly Terrestrial Laser Scans” was featured with a live presentation at this year’s digital event of the ISPRS Congress. The presentation by Katharina Anders was further made available as pre-recorded video, which you can now watch on the 3DGeo YouTube channel: The presented work is part [...]
(deutsch unterhalb) Aerial view of Heidelberg’s old town with the university square. The lack of shade causes heat stress conditions and thus makes the square almost unusable at increased temperatures. This was a site of the study on climate change adaptation of public spaces (Foshag et al. 2020) (Photo: Kathrin Foshag). Climate adaptation strategies to support and protect [...]
Like in 2020, this year’s State of the Map (SotM) is taking place online this week from tomorrow 2021-07-09 to 2021-07-11, starting at 12:00 (CEST) each day. This year, HeiGIT is a bronze sponsor. In addition, there are a total of 7 contributions from HeiGIT/GIScience: one academic talk by Maxwell Owusu four lightning talks and two posters. Maxwell Owusu’s [...]
Pledge4Future is a free web app for the calculation and visualisation of work-related per capita CO2e emissions in research. The aim is to provide individuals and work groups with a simple tool for the long-term reduction of greenhouse gas emissions towards compliance with the Paris Climate Agreement. The calculation includes heating, electricity, business travel and [...]
Wir laden Sie herzlich zum nächsten HGG Vortrag ein: Dienstag, 06. Juli 2021, 19:15 Uhr (online) Prof. Dr. Benjamin Hennig (Háskóli Íslands. Island Universität) Kartenwelten des Anthropozän: Neue Ansichten einer Welt im Wandel Wie sieht die Welt im Zeitalter des Menschen aus? Kartogramme, oder anamorphe Kartendarstellungen, erfreuen sich zunehmender Beliebtheit in der Humangeographie. Diese alternative kartographische Visualisierungsmethode ist [...]
(in Deutsch unterhalb) Aerial view of Heidelberg’s old town with the university square. This was a site of the study on climate change adaptation of public spaces (Foshag et al. 2020). (Photo: Kathrin Foshag). As part of a transdisciplinary collaboration, the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology (HeiGIT), the GIScience research group and the TdLab Geography at Heidelberg University [...]
Two weeks ago, we conducted a field campaign in the frame of a 3DGeo Sensor Practical course to acquire 3D point clouds of Heidelberg’s tallest trees, Sequoias planted in the Arboretum I (see our blog post). Today, we present the prepared data in our new online point cloud viewer based on potree: https://3dweb.geog.uni-heidelberg.de/potree/scenes/sequoia.html A few stills take you [...]
The availability of data on public transport is a prerequisite for numerous spatial data applications such as routing, accessibility analyses or route planning. OpenStreetMap (OSM) – as a global platform for Volunteered Geographic Information – is one of the options for sharing public transport data. The data completeness on OSM, however, is characterized by heterogeneity. Results [...]
Pictures of the Group
GIScience team at a jour fixe meeting in 2017
GIScience team at a jour fixe meeting in 2014
GIScience team at a retreat at Trifels-Annweiler in February 2013
GIScience team at a jour fixe meeting in June 2012
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)
