Track 5: Insightful Frontiers

An introduction to geospatial data science

Geospatial Data Science is the discipline of distilling insights from any source of data that comes with a spatial component. It is estimated that 60-80% of all information is geospatially referenced, but only few companies are aware of – let alone exploit – the full potential of geospatial data.

Applications may include smart farming, fleet management and logistics, real estate appraisal, store site selection for a retail company, marketing campaigns for a telco company aiming at better understanding users’ behavior and many more.

In this hands-on workshop, we will introduce participants to the basic concepts of geospatial data science, including geographical coordinate systems, common data types and state-of-the-art tools in Python, and share key learnings from client projects, e.g. at Raiffeisen and Wüest & Partner, before walking participants through a data pipeline using open geospatial datasets.

Learning goal

The objective is to provide the audience with a deeper understanding of geospatial data science, enabling them to untap potentials in different data projects. Although many companies possess spatial data related to their customers, they may not fully comprehend the value it can offer them. Therefore, this session aims at raising awareness about geospatial data science and how to create value by incorporating this aspect into a project. The key takeaways from this hands-on session will be techniques to enhance the value of your project by incorporating a geospatial perspective, becoming acquainted with different components and challenges of a geospatial data science project and working with tools to interact with geospatial data in Python.

Pre-requisites

Basic knowledge of Python would be desirable, but not required.

  • Ali Soleymani

    Ali holds a Ph.D. in Natural Sciences (GIScience) from the University of Zurich and an MSc in GIS Engineering from the University of Tehran. Before joining D ONE, he was a lead research engineer at Here Technologies working at the intersection of machine learning and geospatial data analytics. Ali has been with the team since 2022.

  • Maria Kliesch

    Maria holds a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Zurich with a specialization in Neurolinguistics. Prior to joining D ONE, she led a Doc.CH research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation on the effects of foreign language learning on the aging brain. Maria has been with the team since January 2022.

  • Philipp Thomann

    Philipp received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Zurich in 2013. Afterwards he served as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. His areas of expertise are machine learning, natural language processing, search and distributed computation. Philipp has been in the team since 2017.