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.
HeiGIT wants to serve you better. Therefore we are conducting user feedback surveys regarding our various services. The Deadline has been extended to March 03rd! Take your chance! If you have ever used one of our OpenStreetMap based Online Services (or will do so now) for whatever purpose, we’d be very happy if you took the time [...]
Welcome back to another #ohsome blog post written by our awesome student assistent Sarah! This time we will look at the completeness of railway network data of one specific city in OpenStreetMap, as well as its development. For this we looked at the city of Prague and its completeness of the operator [...]
Since 2010 organized humanitarian mapping has evolved as a constant and growing element of the global OpenStreetMap (OSM) community. With more than 7,000 projects in 150 countries humanitarian mapping has become a global community effort. Due to this large amount of projects, it can be difficult to get an overview on mapping [...]
ATTENTION!! One week deadline extension. Are you working on GIS for disaster management? Hurry up! You have until Feb, 21 to submit your WIP or Practitioner paper to GIS Track. Extended Submission deadline for WiP and Practitioner papers: February 21, 2021 - updated Track: Geospatial Technologies and Geographic Information Science for Crisis Management (GIS) https://www.drrm.fralinlifesci.vt.edu/iscram2021/files/CFP/ISCRAM2021-Track10-Geospatial_Technologies https://www.drrm.fralinlifesci.vt.edu/iscram2021/call-papers.php Track Description With crisis and [...]
HeiGIT wants to serve you even better. Therefore we are conducting user feedback surveys regarding our various services. If you have ever used one of our OpenStreetMap based Online Services (or will do so now) for whatever purpose, we’d be very happy if you took the time and filled out the respective survey. THANK YOU! We will [...]
In collaboration with the Institute of Earth Sciences at Heidelberg University, the 3DGeo group reconstructed underwater speleothems in a cave in Yucatán, Mexico. The so-called “Hells Bells” are fascinating formations in several sinkholes, at the boundary layer between fresh- and saltwater. The full 3D mesh model obtained from several thousand photographs taken by a [...]
When and where do changes occur in dynamic natural landscapes? A new method has been published that enables the automatic extraction of surface changes from entire time series of 3D point clouds. The developed method of spatiotemporal segmentation extracts changes regarding their surface change history, which makes it particularly useful for natural scenes that are [...]
The Ohsome Quality analysT (short OQT) is the name of a new software implemented by HeiGIT that is based on the #ohsome framework. Its main purpose is to compute quality estimations on OpenStreetMap (OSM) data. Any end user such as humanitarian organisations, public administrations, as well as researchers or any other institution or party interested [...]
In the past 10 years, the collaborative maps of OpenStreetMap (OSM) have been used to support humanitarian efforts around the world as well as to fill important data gaps for implementing major development frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In a recently accepted paper we provide a comprehensive assessment of the evolution of [...]
Since 2010 organized humanitarian mapping has evolved as a constant and growing element of the global OpenStreetMap (OSM) community. With more than 7,000 projects in 150 countries humanitarian mapping has become a global community effort. Due to this large amount of projects it can be difficult to get an overview on mapping [...]
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)