Autors of the publication

Dr. Günter Barnikel completed his studies in biology at the University of Ulm in 1995 with a doctorate on an ecotoxicological topic. After working as a research assistant in the biology department there, he completed a GIS training course (TU Munich) and worked as a research assistant at the Research Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing  Ulm (FAW) in the UIS department and at a management consultancy. Since 2012, he has been working as an IT consultant at Komm.ONE in Stuttgart (formerly Datenzentrale Baden-Württemberg) with a focus on the UIS Baden-Württemberg.

Dr. Bettina Barth studied geography, botany and law at Saarland University. In 1996, she completed her studies with a doctorate on GIS-based erosion forecasts and then worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Physical Geography. Since 2009 she has been working at the State Office for Surveying, Geo-
information and Rural Development of the Saarland as head of the Geodata Center. The tasks of the Geodata Center include the geodata management of the environmental department and the development of the geodata infrastructure for the Saarland as contact point GDI-SL.

Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Manfred Bauer studied geodesy at the University of Bonn. After graduating, he completed a traineeship, which he completed in 1971 with the major state examination for the higher surveying administrative service. From December 1971 to September 1978, he worked for the Hamburg Waterways and Shipping Directorate. From October 1978 until his retirement in March 2006, he was a lecturer in the Department of Surveying at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (now HafenCity University Hamburg - Geomatics). He interrupted his teaching at the FH from October 1, 1981 to September 30, 1982 to work as a hydrographic supervisor in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia). There he was able to gain his first practical experience with satellite positioning. Following his work in Saudi Arabia, he made surveying and positioning with satellites the focus of his teaching activities at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences.

Prof. Dr. Christian Bernhofer studied meteorology and botany at the University of Vienna. After completing his doctorate at the Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics at the University of Vienna in 1980, he was awarded his habilitation and venia legendi for applied meteorology in 1993. Since 1993 he has been Professor and Head of Meteorology at the Institute of Hydrology and Meteorology at the Technical University of Dresden.

Laura Berresheim successfully completed her studies in Biogeosciences at the University of Koblenz-Landau with a Master of Science in 2020. She focused on aquatic ecology and hydrological issues, which culminated in her Master's thesis on the “Comparative investigation of heavy metal mobility between suspended matter, sediments and alluvial soils” in the Lahn river basin. Since January 2020, she has been in charge of project planning from a water ecology and nature conservation perspective at Ingenieurgesellschaft Dr. Siekmann + Partner mbH.

Dr. Michael Bilo graduated with a degree in geography from the Department of Landscape Ecology and Vegetation Science at the University of Cologne in 1987. Until 1991, he worked at the Jülich Research Center (KFA) on a radioecological topic and obtained his doctorate at the University of Tübingen (Dr. rer. nat.). His dissertation was awarded a prize by the Society for Natural History in Württemberg in 1992. After working for the Federal Ministry of Research and the Federal Ministry for the Environment, he joined the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation in 2001, where he is currently Director and Professor of the “Digitization, Species Conservation, Nagoya Protocol” department. Dr. Bilo accompanied the INSPIRE Directive as a national expert and is currently a member of the BMU's digitization steering committee.

Dr. Roberta Bottarin studied biology at the University of Ferrara (Italy) and obtained her doctorate in ecology at the University of Parma (Italy). Since 1998 she has been working at Eurac Research, Bolzano, first as Senior Researcher at the Institute for Alpine Environment, then as Vice Director of the Institute for Alpine Environment (since 2003) and since 2016 as Vice Director of Eurac Research. Her research focuses on the ecology of watercourses, sustainability, biodiversity of alpine ecosystems and their relationships with abiotic parameters and human activities.

Alexander Bräunlich, Project Manager for Strategy and Policy Issues at DEGES, is a graduate industrial engineer (construction) and generalist with a high level of specialist knowledge. After a highly interdisciplinary, life cycle and sustainability-oriented professional career in the areas of construction, operation, maintenance and digitalization in the VINCI Group, he has been structuring and shaping the improvement of digital planning and construction at DEGES since June 2019, among other things in various administrative bodies.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Brinkhoff studied computer science at the University of Bremen. He was a research assistant at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, where he completed his doctorate with a thesis on spatial query processing in geodatabases. He was then project manager for GIS-based applications in traffic telematics. He has been Professor of Geoinformatics at the Jade University of Applied Sciences in Oldenburg since 1999. His work focuses on geodatabases and geodata management, the development of spatial applications and the processing of geosensor data. He is the author of around 85 publications, the author of the only German-language textbook on geodatabase systems and a reviewer for numerous scientific conferences and journals.

Dr. Henning Buddenbaum completed his doctorate at the University of Trier in 2010 on the use of LiDAR and hyperspectral data for remote forest sensing. He was then a postdoc in the EnMAP Core Science Team and has been a research associate in the field of environmental remote sensing and geoinformatics and managing director of the Research Institute for Applied Geoinformatics at Trier University since 2020. His research focuses on multi- and hyperspectral remote sensing of trees.

Dr. Axel Didion studied biology at Saarland University before working as a research assistant at the Zoological Institute in Saarbrücken. In 1990, he completed his doctorate on the physiology of movement in insect flight. Already during his studies he worked as a faunistic expert for various species groups (birds, amphibians, reptiles, butterflies, dragonflies, grasshoppers, ground beetles, hoverflies) for planning offices in Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate, Bremen and Thuringia as a freelancer. Since 1991 he has been employed as a research assistant at the Naturlandstiftung Saar. There he is responsible for the development and implementation of nature conservation projects at state, federal and EU level and looks after the foundation's protected areas. He is significantly involved in the research of dragonflies in Saarland and the compilation of the Red List of dragonflies.

Bastian Ellmenreich studied surveying at Neubrandenburg University of Applied Sciences in 2002, specializing in geoinformatics, and in 2006 studied Geographical Information Science and Systems at the University of Salzburg. Until 2009, he worked in the areas of adminis
development and project management in the field of geoinformatics at a medium-sized engineering office and IT service provider. In 2009, he moved into public administration at the Baden-Württemberg State Institute for the Environment. Here he was responsible for the control and project management of various IT projects. Since 2012, he has been a consultant and is currently Deputy Head of Division in the Information Technology, IT Control Centre, Environmental Information System and Sustainable Digitalization Department at the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Environment, Climate Protection and the Energy Sector.

Jana-Sophie Engelmann, B. Sc. studied at Saarland University from 2016 to 2020, where she completed her Bachelor's degree in Bioinformatics. She then moved to the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld at Trier University of Applied Sciences to complete a Master's degree in Applied Computer Science with a focus on Environmental and Business Informatics.

Prof. Dr. Peter Fischer-Stabel studied geography, computer science, hydrology and botany at Saarland University. He completed his doctorate at the Environmental Research Center there in 1995. From 1992 to 1996 he was a research assistant at the Federal Environmental Specimen Bank and assistant to the management of Game Conservancy Germany. Between 1997 and 2000 he worked in the Earth Observation Department of the European Space Agency (ESA), Rome. Since 2000 he has been Professor of Geoinformatics and Visualization at the Environmental Campus of Trier University of Applied Sciences and since 2003 Director of the Institute for Software Systems in Economy, Environment and Administration (ISS). He maintains various international collaborations and is a member of numerous specialist and expert committees as well as several program committees of scientific conferences. His current research focuses on the design of environmental information systems and on the field of space-time visualization of geoscientific data and environmental monitoring.

Dipl.-Ing. Dirk Fitting studied geodesy at the University of Bonn and then completed his legal clerkship in North Rhine-Westphalia. After working for the City of Cologne, he has held various positions in the Surveying and Cadastral Administration of Rhineland-Palatinate since 2007. In addition to several management positions at a surveying and cadastral office and a head of department at the Ministry of the Interior and Sport, he has been responsible for the Geodata Services and Geoservice department at the State Office for Surveying and Geoinformation since the beginning of 2019. He represents the state of Rhineland-Palatinate in the AdV working group “Public, Relation and Marketing” and at the Higher Examination Office for the surveying traineeship as a member of the Geodesy Examination Board.

Dr. Johannes Franke studied geography at the Technical University of Dresden. From 2001 to 2014, he was a research assistant at the Chair of Meteorology at TU Dresden. In 2009, he defended his dissertation on “Risks of climate change for the water balance - variability and trend of the temporal precipitation spectrum” at TU Dresden. Since 2014, he has been a consultant at the Saxon State Office for Environment, Agriculture and Geology, Climate, Air Quality Department.

Hendrik Geyer studied biology in Leipzig from 2014 to 2017. This was followed by a Master's degree in Marburg on the subject of “Nature Conservation and Biodiversity”. He completed this degree in 2019 with a master's thesis on the “Influence of mowing and grazing on the diversity of spiders”. Since 2020, he has been working for the Rhineland-Palatinate Nature and Environment Foundation in the ArtenFinder Rheinland-Pfalz citizen science project.

Prof. Dr. Klaus-Uwe Gollmer teaches and researches in the field of applied computer science at the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld of Trier University of Applied Sciences. His work currently focuses on the application of model-based machine learning methods in cyber-physical systems. At the same time, he is involved at the interface between industry, universities, schools and the maker community. The IoT2 workshop, a result of this overarching collaboration, makes the Internet of Things and Thinking tangible. Professor Gollmer studied bioengineering (medical technology) at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and Electrical Engineering (Computer Engineering) at the TU Hamburg-Harburg. He completed his doctorate at the University of Hanover in the field of pattern recognition in biotechnological processes.

Achim Guldner, M. Sc. studied Applied Computer Science at the Environmental Campus of Trier University of Applied Sciences. Since 2013, his research focus has been on information systems for sustainable development, where he has worked on several research and development projects with a focus on improving resource and energy efficiency of and through ICT and especially software systems. He is currently a member of the research college “AI-based Self-Adaptive Cyber-Physical Process Systems”, where he is investigating the energy and resource efficiency of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Other research interests include data science and data management.

Dipl.-Phys. Walter Harms has a degree in physics from the University of Oldenburg. Since 1996 he has been working at the Federal Office for Radiation Protection in the ODL monitoring network, where he is involved in server administration and database as well as embedded systems and detector development. In addition, he provides practical assistance to national organizations in setting up nationwide monitoring networks and measurements, e.g. in Chernobyl, and was also a trainer for IT specialists (until 2015).

Prof. Dr. Klaus Helling studied business administration at the University of Göttingen, followed by a doctorate (Dr. rer. pol.) at the University of Osnabrück. He then worked as a management consultant for process and environmental management in Saarbrücken. Since 1998, he has been Professor of Business Administration/Environmental Management at the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld of Trier University of Applied Sciences and co-founder and Director of the Institute for Applied Material Flow Management. He has also been a member of the scientific advisory board of B.A.U.M. (Bundesdeutscher Arbeitskreis für Umweltbewusstes Management e. V.) since 2009, a sustainability officer at the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld since 2010, a member of the board of trustees of the Stefan Morsch Foundation in Birkenfeld since 2016 and a member of the climate protection advisory board of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate since 2018. His work focuses on operational material flow management and sustainable management.

Heinrich Humer is a Senior Engineer at the Center for Digital Safety & Security at the AIT Austrian Institute in Vienna. He has been responsible for the architecture and implementation of environmental monitoring networks and emission inventories for many years. He designed the emikat.at system for the administration and processing of emission inventories and has been responsible for it for over 20 years.

Timo Johann is a research assistant at Trier University of Applied Sciences and a doctoral student at the Mobile Services and Context Aware Software Engineering Group at the University of Hamburg. He holds a Master's degree in Applied Computer Science from Trier University of Applied Sciences/
Environmental Campus Birkenfeld. He worked in the Green Software Engineering project and published several papers on “Sustainability Aspects of Computer Science”. Before returning to the university, he worked as an associate manager for a consulting firm in Luxembourg.

Dr. Eva Kern is concerned with the question of how environmental aspects of software can be evaluated and communicated and has written numerous international conference papers on green software. Another area of interest is the impact of digitalization from a global perspective. Prior to her doctorate, she worked as a research assistant in various research and development projects, including the “GREENSOFT - Green Software Engineering” project at the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld. Eva Kern completed her studies in Computer Science and Media (degree: M. Sc.) at Trier University of Applied Sciences in 2013 and received her doctorate from the Faculty of Sustainability at Leuphana University Lüneburg in 2018.

Sophia Keßeler-Johann, M. Sc. completed her biology degree at the University of Bonn. She then studied for a Master's degree in BioGeoSciences with a focus on aquatic science at the University of Koblenz-Landau. Since September 2019, she has been working as a research assistant at the Secretariat of the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR). There she is responsible for the coordination and organization of the working group “Water Quality and Emissions” with its expert groups, especially in the area of the international alarm and warning plan and chemical monitoring.

Dr. Carolin Klonner researches the collection and presentation of participatory geographical information and how this can be used for disaster risk reduction. In her doctoral thesis, she chose sketch maps as a participatory method to visualize the flood risk perception of the inhabitants of Santiago de Chile and Eberbach. In her current project “Waterproofing Data” with study areas in Brazil, she is investigating ways to optimize the exchange of information between scientists, citizens and authorities. As part of the project, the Sketch Map tool was developed, which analyzes OSM data of a region and gives users, e.g. a local authority, feedback on whether the OSM data is suitable for use as a sketch map.

Dr. Eva Maria Klos studied history, French and education at the Universities of Trier and Charles de Gaulle - Lille III from 2007 to 2013. From 2013 to 2017, she researched memories of the Second World War in Luxembourg, France and Belgium as part of her dissertation at the Universities of Luxembourg and Trier, funded by the Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg. She has been a research funding officer at Trier University of Applied Sciences since 2017.

Horst Kremers is an engineer and information scientist. He is particularly interested in applied digital semiotics in connection with comprehensive management aspects in the operation and control of complex information systems. After his studies (RWTH Aachen and University of Bonn) and positions at the TU Berlin and the University of Stuttgart, he joined the Technical Administration of the Berlin Senate. He has been actively involved in defining strategies and technical innovations in several professional associations and organizations. For many years he has also been involved in discussions around the implementation of UN instruments at global, national, regional and city level, mainly in the areas of Sustainable Development (UN SDGs) and Disaster Risk Reduction (UN DRR) information management.

Prof. Dr. Rolf Krieger studied computer science at Saarland University from 1985 to 1989. He then worked as a research assistant at the University of Frankfurt am Main, obtaining his doctorate in 1994. He worked as an IT consultant at SAP until 1999. His consulting work focused on the introduction of standard business software in retail companies. Since 1999, he has been a professor at Trier University of Applied Sciences, Environmental Campus Birkenfeld, where he teaches business informatics. His research focuses on the architecture, development and introduction of information systems and information and data quality management.

Dr. Rico Kronenberg studied hydrology at the Technical University of Dresden. From 2012 to 2014, he completed his doctoral studies at the Moscow State Technical University “N. E. Bauman”. In 2015, he defended his dissertation on “Processing radar data for climatological applications” at TU Dresden. Since 2014, he has been a research assistant at the Chair of Meteorology at TU Dresden and is responsible for the technical administration and further development of ReKIS. He also lectures on the basics of remote sensing and measurement, hydrometeorology and applied meteorology for hydrologists.

Jan-Henrik Kruse studied civil engineering with a specialization in water management/urban water management at the Koblenz University of Applied Sciences.
Urban Water Management at Koblenz University of Applied Sciences. He successfully completed his studies in 2019 with a master's thesis. He has been working at Ingenieurgesellschaft Dr. Siekmann + Partner mbH since 2017, initially as a student trainee and then as a project engineer after graduating. He specializes in flood and heavy rainfall prevention and is responsible for projects with this focus.

Dr. Stefanie von Landwüst studied law at the University of Göttingen and at the Université de Bourgogne in Dijon, France. After completing her studies, she worked as a research assistant at the Institute for International and European Law at the University of Göttingen, where she obtained her doctorate in 2007 on a topic of European law. After completing her legal clerkship with stages at the ECJ in Luxembourg, among others, she worked as a lawyer at two international law firms in Munich from 2009 to 2018, where she advised in particular on the planning and implementation of environmentally relevant projects with a focus on planning, nature conservation and environmental law. Since 2018, she has been head of the legal department and property management at WIGES Wasserbauliche Infrastrukturgesellschaft mbH in Munich. She is also the author of several publications on European, planning, environmental and nature conservation law.

Dr. Sven Lautenbach works at HeiGIT and conducts research on the use of OSM in the fields of humanitarian cooperation, public health and the environment. He previously worked at the Chair of Geoinformatics at Heidelberg University, the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research at Humboldt University in Berlin and the University of Osnabrück in the fields of landscape ecology, geomatics and environmental system modeling.
modeling. He was also Junior Professor for Land Use Modeling and Ecological Services at the University of Bonn.

Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Markus Lermen studied surveying at Mainz University of Applied Sciences from 1984 to 1988 and realized the data migration between two GDV systems as part of his diploma thesis. He was then employed as an authorized signatory at an engineering office which, as a service provider, was responsible for the introduction of GDV systems and the digitalization of pipeline networks for large energy supply companies throughout Germany. He later switched to the energy sector and has since been responsible for network documentation for a regional energy company, in addition to other tasks. He is also involved in regulatory work at the DVGW, including as Chairman of the Technical Committee for Network Documentation.

Dr. Christina Ludwig is doing her doctorate under Prof. Dr. Alexander Zipf in the Department of Geoinformatics (GIScience) at the Institute of Geography at the University of Heidelberg. Her dissertation deals with the fusion of geoinformation from remote sensing and OSM data, taking into account data-specific uncertainties, OSM data quality and regionally different characteristics of OSM data. She studied Environmental Sciences (B. Sc.) at the University of Freiburg and Applied Geoinformatics (M. Sc.) at the University of Trier. 

Rüdiger Machhamer received his Master's degree in Applied Computer Science from the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld in 2019. He is currently working on his doctorate in the Distributed Systems research group at the Institute for Software Systems (ISS), where he leads the BMEL research project KI-Pilot. His research focuses on machine learning, online learning and the Internet of Things.

Franziska Mai is a student of Environmental and Business Informatics (B. Sc.) at Trier University of Applied Sciences. As part of the practical study phase, she worked in the analysis and evaluation of software products at the Institute for Software Systems. Her interest here is the implementation of measurements as a condition for the award of the Blue Angel for resource and energy-efficient software products. In cooperation with the Institute for Software Systems and the KDE Community, she continues to evaluate software products in terms of resource and energy efficiency.

Michael Mattern, B. Sc. is a media computer scientist and currently runs the Digitalization Innovation Lab at the Environmental Campus of Trier University of Applied Sciences, a project of the Carl Zeiss Foundation. He is also active in the field of GIS and works with the Hunsrück-Hochwald and Hainich National Parks on various projects relating to geodata and metadata, including the national parks' research server (fs.nlphh.de).

Ulrich Moritz has worked for the Surveying and Cadastral Administration of Rhineland-Palatinate since 1970. In recent years, he has been heavily involved in the transfer of data from the surveying spatial reference to the AFIS data model as part of the introduction of AAA. He heads the AFIS project group of the AdV Spatial Reference Working Group.

Prof. Dr. Stefan Naumann has held the professorship for Fundamentals of Computer Science with a focus on Environmental and Sustainability Informatics at the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld of Trier University of Applied Sciences since 2008. His research interests include green software engineering, i.e. how software products can become more energy and resource efficient. He is also interested in all questions relating to the contribution that information technology can make to solving energy and environmental problems.

Dominik Neumann works at HeiGIT with a focus on public relations. He is completing his B. Sc. at the Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg with a focus on economic geography, social networks and geoinformatics.

Tobias Neumann studied environmental engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Jena and graduated with a Dipl.-Ing. (FH). This was followed by a part-time distance learning course in environmental protection at the University of Rostock to obtain a Master of Science degree. His master's thesis dealt with the effects of climate change on the expansion of renewable energies in Thuringia. Since 2012, he has been a clerk in the Climate Agency department at the Thuringian State Office for the Environment, Mining and Nature Conservation and ReKIS state editor for Thuringia.

Prof. Dr. Patrick Noack studied agricultural sciences at the Technical University of Munich from 1991 to 1997, specializing in land management and the environment. From 1997 to 2013, he worked in the areas of software development, sales management, project management, product development and research at geo-konzept GmbH, Adelschlag. Since 2013, he has held the professorship for Agricultural Systems Engineering at Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Sciences. He is currently Dean of Studies for Agricultural Engineering and Scientific Director of the Competence Centre for Digital Agriculture (KoDA) and conducts various research projects in the field of digitalization.

Dr. David Oesch studied geography and history at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro (USA), and the University of Bern (Switzerland). This was followed by a Master's degree in Geography, Meteorology and Climatology at the Department of Remote Sensing. He completed his doctorate on the operational processing of satellite data for the data assimilation process in numerical weather prediction models. He was then involved in the development and operation of agrometeorological and climatological products at Syngenta. Since 2010, he has been Senior Project Manager/Product Owner of the federal geodata infrastructure geo.admin.ch at the Federal Office of Topography swisstopo.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Boris Resnik studied geodesy at the University of Mining Engineering in St. Petersburg (Russia). Between 1982 and 1991, he worked in Russia as a surveyor in the Project Institute of Automobile Roads, in the Construction Assembly Administration for Subway Construction and in the Research Institute of Mine Surveying. From 1993 to 1995 he worked as a surveyor in an engineering office in Aachen. After two years as a research assistant at the BTU Cottbus and TU Braunschweig, he worked as a senior engineer in the Department of Land Culture and Environmental Protection at the University of Rostock from 1997 to 2003, where he was responsible for research in geoinformation acquisition and processing, among other things. Since 2004, he has been Professor of Surveying and Geoinformatics in the Department of Civil Engineering and Geoinformatics at Beuth University of Applied Sciences (formerly TFH) Berlin.

Dr. Rebecca Retzlaff completed her doctorate in 2016 on the potential of small unmanned aerial vehicles in multispectral remote sensing of agricultural and archaeological issues.
and is a research assistant in the field of environmental remote sensing and geoinformatics. In addition to teaching, she works on applications of geoinformatics and multispectral and thermal remote sensing of UAV data in viticulture and agriculture.

Dr. rer. nat. Achim Röder received his doctorate in 2005 with a thesis on the monitoring of Mediterranean rangelands using remote sensing time series and works as academic director in the Department of Environmental Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics at the University of Trier. His scientific interest is the analysis of land use dynamics in coupled human-environment systems by integrating satellite time series with (geo)data. His current research focuses on southern Africa.

Prof. Dr. Ariane Ruff has held the Chair of Urban Resources at Nordhausen University of Applied Sciences since March 2019 and is head of the newly founded Thuringian Innovation Center for Recyclable Materials (ThIWert). After studying geography at the University of Potsdam, she worked at the University of Erfurt from 2000 to 2003 at the Institute of Geography as part of teaching assignments and research projects. From 2003 to 2015, she worked as a research assistant at Nordhausen University of Applied Sciences, where she was in charge of numerous research projects in the field of land recycling and land and energy management. From 2015 to 2019, she worked as a district planner and deputy head of office at the district administration office of Wartburgkreis (Thuringia). In 2017, she successfully completed her part-time doctoral studies at the University of Liechtenstein.

DI Gerald Schimak works as a scientist at the Center for Digital Safety & Security at the AIT Austrian Institute in Vienna. For more than 20 years, he has been coordinating and working on medium-sized and large European research projects in the field of environmental information systems, specializing in air quality monitoring networks. His current scientific work focuses on innovation aspects of crisis management in relation to natural disasters and climate change.

Dr. Uta Schirpke works at the Institute of Ecology at the University of Innsbruck and at the Institute for Alpine Environment at Eurac Research in Bolzano (Italy). After a diploma in physical geography from LMU Munich, she completed her doctorate at the Institute of Ecology at the University of
Innsbruck and also completed her habilitation there in 2020 on the topic of “Ecosystem services in mountain areas”. Her research focuses on the spatial and temporal modeling of ecosystem services, the effects of landscape and climate change and the interactions between socio-economic and ecological characteristics of mountain landscapes.

Adrian Schmid-Breton, M. Geog. studied Geography in Lille and Berlin and Natural Risk and Disaster Management in Montpellier, where he focused on the issue of transboundary flood risk management on international water bodies. Since January 2010, he has been working as a research assistant at the Secretariat of the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR). There he deals with issues of water quantity and climate change and supervises the coordinated implementation of the international flood risk management plan and the European Flood Risk Management Directive (FRMD) in the Rhine catchment area.

Jens Schneider, M. Sc. studied Media Informatics at the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld of Trier University of Applied Sciences. He works as a research assistant at the Institute for Software Systems at Trier University of Applied Sciences in the “Distributed Systems” working group. His research focuses on platforms for digital services and intelligent mobility.

Dr. Michael Schultz is concerned with the fusion of geodata at the interface of remote
exploration, GIScience and citizen science. He uses artificial intelligence to assess data quality and solve traditional feature extraction problems. The effective use of deep learning in combination with OSM and remote sensing data results in exclusive and novel data products. He is currently working on the generation of OSM landuse products, emission maps from OSM (HCE) and the quality assessment of OSM using remote sensing and deep learning (DFG). Michael Schultz works closely with application experts from academia and industry in the interest of efficient and solution-oriented science.

Dr.-Ing. Dietrich Schürer studied geodesy at the University of Bonn and then completed his legal clerkship in Rhineland-Palatinate. After his time as a research assistant at the Institute for Cartography and Geoinformation at the University of Bonn, which he completed with a doctorate, he has held various positions at the Rhineland-Palatinate State Office for Surveying and Geobasis Information since 2002. He is currently head of the Geotopographic Information Department and represents the state of Rhineland-Palatinate in the AdV Geotopography Working Group.

Linda Sendlinger works at HeiGIT with a focus on public relations. After training as a journalist, she completed her B. Sc. in Geography at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and is now completing her M. Sc. there. Her research focuses on social geography and geoinformatics, particularly in the areas of institutional research and social network analysis.

Stephan Siegert, Project Manager for Digital Participation and Approval Procedures at DEGES, holds a degree in geography and specializes in issues of public participation and planning approval for transport infrastructure projects. After many years working for Deutsche Bahn and the Danish project company Femern A/S, he has been responsible for the digitalization of participation and planning approval procedures and their integration into the BIM method in the Digital Planning and Construction department at DEGES since May 2019.

Dr. Thomas Siekmann completed his studies in waste management engineering at RWTH Aachen University in 2010. He then worked for four years at the Research Institute for Water and Waste Management FiW e. V. at RWTH Aachen University. Here he dealt with various issues in the context of adapting water management infrastructures to the effects of climate change. He successfully completed his doctorate in 2014 with the topic “Determination and assessment of urban risks due to pluvial flooding for risk-oriented adaptation to wall effects”. Since then, he has been working at the engineering company Dr. Siekmann + Partner mbh, where he has been managing the business since 2019.

Werner Sommer completed a teaching degree in chemistry and geography at grammar schools at the University of Münster. From 1992 to 2015, he was a consultant at the Saxon State Ministry for the Environment and Agriculture. Since 2016, he has been head of the “Climate, Air, Noise, Radiation” department at the Saxon State Office for Environment, Agriculture and Geology.

Dr. Johannes Stoffels has been working as a research assistant in the field of environmental remote sensing and geoinformatics at the University of Trier since completing his doctorate on satellite image-based tree species classification. He is concerned with the application of remote sensing and geoinformatics in the monitoring of forest ecosystems and to support sustainable forest management. 

Prof. Dr. Stefan Stoll heads the “Interdisciplinary Environmental Protection” working group at the Birkenfeld Environmental Campus of Trier University of Applied Sciences. He researches and publishes on applied ecological issues with the aim of making environmental management more effective and sustainable. His focus is on aquatic ecosystems and the optimization of water body restoration. He also runs an ecological monitoring program in the Hunsrück-Hochwald National Park to observe long-term changes in the environment and identify their drivers. Stefan Stoll is a member of the board of the German long-term ecological research network Long-Term Ecological Research Deutschland (LTER-D).

Dr. Tabea Stötter completed her Master's degree in Environmental Geosciences at the University of Basel in 2011 and went on to complete her PhD in Climate Science at the University of Bern. She has been working in the Secretariat of the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR) since 2015. In particular, she supports the “Water Quality and Emissions” working group. This also includes numerous expert groups on various topics, such as micropollutants and non-target analysis as well as the chemical aspects of the Rhine Management Plan under the Water Framework Directive. She has also been Deputy Managing Director of the ICPR since November 2020.

Stefan Struve studied industrial engineering with a specialization in chemical and environmental engineering at Merseburg University of Applied Sciences. From 2009 to 2016, he worked at the Saxony-Anhalt State Administration Office in the field of plant-related immission control. Since 2016, he has been an employee at the State Office for Environmental Protection Saxony-Anhalt in the Climate, Renewable Energies, Sustainability, Environmental Alliance, Climate Office, and is responsible for the ReKIS state area Saxony-Anhalt. He also gives lectures as part of the training of environmental trainees on the subject of “climate change”.

Prof. Dr. Ulrike Tappeiner studied biology and computer science, obtained her doctorate in 1985 and habilitated in ecology in 1996. Since 1995 she has headed the Institute for Alpine Environment at Eurac Research in Bolzano (Italy), since 2005 she has been Professor of Ecosystem Research and Landscape Ecology at the University of Innsbruck, since 2006 Spokesperson of the Research Center “Ecology of the Alpine Space” and since 2018 President of the Free University of Bolzano. Her research interests include the effects of land use and climate change on biogeochemical cycles, functional biodiversity and ecosystem services, as well as long-term social-ecological monitoring and the development of sustainability indicators in mountain regions.

Dr. Erich Tasser works at the Institute for Alpine Environment at Eurac Research in Bolzano (Italy). He habilitated at the Institute of Ecology at the University of Innsbruck on the subject of “Landscape Modeling in Mountain Areas”. His research focuses on systems ecology and landscape ecology, process analysis at different temporal and spatial scales and landscape modeling. In particular, he conducts research on the ecological effects of land use changes in mountain areas, with special consideration of biodiversity
He is particularly interested in the ecological effects of land-use changes in mountain areas, with a focus on biodiversity, vegetation changes, risk potential, the water and carbon cycle and ecosystem services.

Prof. Dr. Henrik te Heesen is Professor of Renewable Energies at the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld of Trier University of Applied Sciences. He studied physics at RWTH Aachen University and completed his doctorate in physics at Ruhr University Bochum. After working as assistant to the CEO, he was head of the O&M department of a medium-sized company in the photovoltaic industry. In 2013, he joined the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld and is responsible for the “Renewable Energies” degree program. His research focuses on energy model development and quality assurance of renewable energy systems. He has been Head of the Institute for Operations and Technology Management (IBT) at the Environmental Campus since June 2018 and a member of the board of the environmental technology network Ecoliance Rhineland-Palatinate since January 2019. He is the author of various publications, in particular on energy system modelling and the yield analysis and optimization of photovoltaic systems.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Udelhoven is Head of Environmental Remote Sensing & Geoinformatics at the University of Trier. His research interests include monitoring and modeling of spatiotemporal processes of the geosphere and biosphere through the integrated use of geodata, high-resolution remote sensing data and (geo)statistical methods. He is a member of ESA's Mission Advisory Group (MAG) for the Sentinel candidate mission LSTM - Copernicus Land Surface Temperature Monitoring.

Kristof Ueding completed his Bachelor's degree in Applied Computer Science at the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld (branch of Trier University of Applied Sciences) in 2021. He is currently studying at the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld to obtain a Master's degree in Applied Computer Science. In addition to his studies, he works as a research assistant at the Institute for Software Systems (ISS) in the AI Pilot research project.

Dr. Gerhard Wagner studied geography, spatial planning and remote sensing at the Universities of Tübingen, Freiburg and Saarbrücken; his doctorate in biogeography, soil science and ecotoxicology followed in March 1987. He has been project manager for the Federal Environmental Specimen Bank at the Institute of Biogeography at Saarland University since 1979 and has held the same position at the University of Trier since 2001. From 1998 to 2001, he was responsible for coordinating the EU project “Comparative Evaluation of European Methods for Sampling and Sample Preparation of Soils” (CEEM), the first round-robin sampling trial at EU level. Since 2007, he has been the quality management representative of the ISO 17025 accredited project group.

Prof. Dr. Volker Wohlgemuth studied computer science at the Universities of Hamburg and Christchurch (New Zealand) from 1991 to 1997 after training and working for the German Weather Service. After graduating in 1997, he worked as a research assistant at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hamburg, where he received his doctorate in Applied Computer Science in 2005. From 1997 to 2005, he worked as a software developer, project manager and key account manager for ifu Hamburg GmbH. In the winter semester of 2005/2006, he was appointed as a university lecturer at the Berlin University of Applied Sciences (HTW) in the fields of material flow management, modeling and simulation as well as the application and development of business environmental information systems (BUIS). Since then, he has carried out numerous technology transfer projects between academia and industry in the areas of the application of material flow management and simulation tools to increase resource efficiency as well as corresponding software developments in the field of corporate environmental information systems (BUIS). His other research areas are the usability of BUIS and the use of AI methods in BUIS.

Dr. Bernhard Zagel studied geography and applied geoinformatics at the University of Salzburg and received his doctorate there with a thesis in the field of traffic management and geoinformatics. He has been involved in research and teaching at the Department of Geoinformatics - Z_GIS since 1995 and was a lecturer at UNIGIS Distance Learning for over ten years. He has coordinated the AGIT symposia and the GI_Forum with his team since 2006. He has been a Principal Investigator at the LTER site Oberes Stubachtal in the Hohe Tauern National Park in Salzburg for over ten years, conducting long-term ecological research, in particular on the relationship between climate - glaciers - water and the associated glacial hydrological processes.

Prof. Dr. Alexander Zipf heads the Department of Geoinformatics (GIScience) at the Institute of Geography at Heidelberg University. He is a member of the Center for Scientific Computing (IWR) and a founding member of the Heidelberg Center for the Environment (HCE). He is also currently establishing the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology (HeiGIT gGmbH). He previously held the Chair of Cartography at the University of Bonn and was previously Professor of Applied Computer Science and Geoinformatics at Mainz University of Applied Sciences. He studied mathematics and geography at the University of Heidelberg and completed his doctorate at the European Media Laboratory in Heidelberg. His research interests include geo-crowdsourcing and volunteered geographic information for environmental applications, disaster management, humanitarian aid and transportation.

Dr. Patrick Zwickl is Senior Engineer, Project Manager and Business Development Manager at the Center for Digital Safety & Security of the AIT Austrian Institute in Vienna. His focus is on sensor networks, IoT and information systems in critical areas (e.g. environmental or security monitoring). He holds a doctorate in business informatics, spent several years conducting interdisciplinary research into telecommunications solutions and has a background in strategic and technical business IT consulting.