Netherlands

Utrecht University

Utrecht, the Netherlands

With a unique combination of expertise in both natural and social sciences in a single faculty, The Faculty of Geosciences has a strong comprehensive strength and is widely accepted in the world. Students with master’s degrees can look for 4-year doctoral positions on its website.

Professors:

Steven de Jong: Geohazards; Landscape Functioning, Geo-computation and Hydrology; Land Degradation and Remote Sensing;
Maarten Kleinhans: Geomorphology; Biogeoscience; Coastal Evolution; River Floodplain Ecosystems;
Marc Bierkens: Global Hydrology and water resources; Groundwater Depletion; Water Scarcity;
Kim Cohen: Generic palaeogeographical mapping; Subsurface geological architecture of modern deltas.

Delft University of Technology

Delft, The Netherlands

Unit: Urbanism-Track Geomatics Civil-Track Geoscience & Remote Sensing

Delft University of Technology (TUDelft) is one of Europe’s top universities of science and technology, with a long history and deep strength in the field of engineering. There are two GIS/RS-related institutions in TUDelft: Geomatics in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, and Geoscience & Remote Sensing in the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences. Geomatics puts particular emphasis on 3D Geoinformation, Smart Cities, and building environment. Geoscience & Remote Sensing focuses more on the applications of Remote Sensing and Geodesy in Atmospheric science and Earth system science fields.

Professors:

Geomatics:

P.J.M. van Oosterom: 3D land administration, spatial information infrastructure;
Martijn Meijers: Geo-database management systems, map generalisation, cartography and geo-visualization, (applied) computational geometry for GIS, handling large datasets and topological consistency;
J.E. Stoter: 3D geoinformation infrastructure, 3D indoor modelling and navigation, data structures and algorithms for 3D modelling;
H. Ledoux: 3D geographic information system (GIS), computational geometry, 3D modelling, point could modelling and analysis;
Giorgio Agugiaro: Geographical Information Systems, spatial data integration, semantic 3D city models and their energy-related topics;
Clara Garcia-Sanchez: Computational Fluid Dynamics, Wind Engineering, Pollution dispersion, Urban flows;
Liangliang Nan: Computer vision, machine learning (deep learning), computer graphics, and 3D geoinformation, Acquiring, analyzing, understanding, and modeling real-world scenes;

Geoscience & Remote Sensing:

R.F. Hanssen: radar remote sensing, geodesy, geostatistics;
H.J.J. Jonker: large eddy simulation, pollutant dispersion, boundary layer;
P.F. Levelt: atmospheric composition, air quality;
H.W.J. Russchenberg: climate change, measuring the atmosphere, nowcasting rainfall;
Susan Steele-Dunne: microwave remote sensing, transport of water through vegetation, modeling, data assimilation and machine learning;
P.J.G. Teunissen: navigation, positioning, GNSS, geodesy;

Vrije University Amsterdam

Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Unit: Spatial Information Laboratory

The main research lines of the Spatial Information Laboratory (SPINlab) are: spatial analysis & modelling, geodesign, risk management, spatial digital humanities. The SPINlab coordinates the UNIGIS distance learning postgraduate course and masters programme on spatial information management. The students in the first two years are mainly devoted to classes, and the students in the third year should devote to the thesis. The project mainly includes courses such as Geovisualisation, Geoprocessing, Geodatabases, Geodata Capture, Standards and Quality, etc.

Professors:

Eric Koomen: urban development, land-use change, spatial modelling and policy support;
Niels van Manen: historical GIS, urban risk mapping and Geodesign for urban heritage planning;
Erik Verhoef: Traffic congestion, static and dynamic network analysis, urban externalities, second-best regulation, efficiency and equity aspects of spatial externalities and regulation, spatial equilibrium modelling, valuation, transport economics, urban economics;
Carolyn Fischer: environmental policy instrument design, climate and renewable energy policies, carbon leakage, technological innovation, eco-certification, and wildlife conservation;

University of Groningen

Groningen, the Netherlands

Unit: Urban and Regional Studies Institute

The faculty of spatial sciences provides the possible specializations for Economic Geography / Economic Geography, Competitiveness and Trade, Real Estate Studies, Population Studies, Society, Sustainability and Planning, Environmental and Infrastructure Planning. Most of the GIS-related programs are carried out in the urban and regional studies institute and are integrated with planning in various degrees. The GIS-related program of the faculty of spatial sciences is mainly aimed at academic study. Undergraduate students can apply for 2-years master programs, and masters can apply for 4-year doctoral program.

Professors:

Claudia Yamu: urban analytics and modeling, computation, space syntax, tool and method development, participatory planning, and decision support for urban performance and change;
Gerd Weitkamp: GIS analysis and gps-data, Qualitative and quantitative methods, Health geography, Active transportation, Landscape research;
Daniella Vos: GIS, machine learning techniques and Bayesian inference, transformations in human subsistence and settlement patterns;
Jos Arts: infrastructure and environmental planning, environmental impact assessment, ex post evaluation;
Dimitris Ballas: Economic Geography, Spatial Economics, Regional Science, Social and Spatial Inequalities, Happiness and Well-being, Migration, Spatial Microsimulation, Geoinformatics;
Bettina Bock: rural development, social innovation, rural mobility and migration, rural magrinalisation, rural governance, participatory governance, animal welfare, rural gender, sustainable food production and consumption, green care, multifunctional agriculture;
Tialda Haartsen: Geography, Area Studies, Social Issues;
Hinke Haisma: Child nutrition, Global Health, Capability Approach, Inequalities;
Ed Nozeman: Planning & Development, Urban Studies, Geography;
Dirk Strijker: Geography, Agricultural Economics & Policy, Economics, General;
Frank Vanclay: social impact assessment and management, social performance, social sustainability, community engagement, human rights impact assessment, social aspects of climate change, cultural geography, rural sociology, sociology of food and agriculture;
Arno van der Vlist: Real Estate Development, Urban Economics, Public Housing;

University of Twente (UT)

Enschede, Overijssel, The Netherlands

Unit: ITC

The Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) at the University of Twente was founded in 1950 as a response to the United Nations’ efforts to help train professionals in aerial mapping in developing countries. From there, the ITC has grown into an institute with a team of experienced researchers with various backgrounds and evolved into the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (IIGSO). Since January 1st, 2010, ITC has officially become an affiliated unit of the University of Twente, and the educational and research resources of both parties have been integrated and thus upgraded. ITC hosts six departments, namely ：Department of Earth Observation Science, Department of Earth Systems Analysis, Department of Geo-information Processing, Department of Natural Resources, Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-information Management and Department of Water Resources. Its specializations cover a wide range of areas, including GIS, remote sensing, photogrammetry, natural resources, water resources, earth system science, urban and regional planning, etc.

ITC currently operates these following 6 master’s programs, all of which are research-based master’s courses.

Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (2-year, taught in English) with 6 directions: Applied remote sensing for Earth Sciences, Free Specialization, Geo-Information management For Land Administration, geoinformatics, natural hazards and Disaster Risk Reduction, natural resources management, urban planning and management, and water resources and environmental management. In addition to completing the master’s degree at ITC, Chinese students registered at Chang’an University or Capital Normal University could apply for the “1+1” joint master’s program in this field.
Spatial Engineering (2-year, taught in English).
Cartography (1-year, taught in English). This is part of the Erasmus program jointly offered by the Technical University of Munich, the Technical University of Vienna, the Technical University of Dresden and the University of Twente.
Geographic Information Science and Earth Observation for Environmental Modeling and Natural Resource Management(IGEON) (2-year, taught in English) online program.
Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation for Environmental Modeling and Management (2-year, taught in English). This is part of the Erasmus program jointly offered by the University of Twente, Lund University, Catholic University of Leuven, and the University of Tartu.
Geogrphical Inforamtion Management and Application (2-year, taught in English).

Doctoral programs corresponds to the six departments within ITC, all of which are 4-year programs. Only full professors at ITC can be the main mentor (promoter) of doctoral students. Advisors in the doctoral committee are formed by the promoter (main advisor, must be full professor) and daily supervisors (can be associate or assistant professors). Scholarship information can be found on this page。

Professors:

Department of Earth Observation Science:

Alfred Stein: spatial (and temporal) statistics, general statistics, fuzzy techniques and quality of spatial data, Bayesian networks, image fusion;
George Vosselman: quality analysis of laser altimetry data, strip adjustment, segmentation and classification of point clouds, 3D building and road modeling from both point clouds and imagery, model driven analysis of aerial and industrial imagery;
Justine Ianthe Blanford: education, health, vector-borne diseases, pandemics, food environment, Twitter data;
Ling Chang: statistical hypothesis testing, time series modeling, change detection using satellite-borne remote sensing technology, particularly InSAR techniques;
Sander Oude Elberink: information extraction from point clouds, 3D reconstruction by fusing topographic maps and laser data;
Claudio Persello: UAV images and photogrammetric point clouds, multispectral VHR satellite images, hyperspectral images, deep learning, Convolutional neural networks, SVM and kernel methods, Supervised, semi supervised and active learning, transfer learning and domain adaptation, feature selection/extraction, Classification map accuracy assessment, mapping of agriculture fields, forest inventories, ground sample collection optimization;
Mariana Belgiu: deals with the design, testing, and implementation of efficient methods to classify multi-temporal and single-date satellite images and with the transferability of supervised classification methods across different geographic areas;
Michael Yang: computer vision and photogrammetry with specialization on deep Learning, graphical models, scene understanding, and multi-Sensor fusion;
Serkan Girgin: geospatial data science;

Department of Earth Systems Analysis:

Mark van der Meijde: making the link between remotely sensed surface and subsurface information. Fields of application focus on geophysics, 3D geological modeling, integrating space and airborne (hyperspectral) remote sensing with seismology for geo-hazards and tectonics, and 3D environmental modeling, particularly focussing on detection of natural and man-made hydrocarbon leakages;
Victor Jetten: characterisation of hazard, vulnerability and risk, effective decision-making in complex and changing risk context, reducing risk and curbing losses through knowledge-based actions;
Norman Kerle: hazards, risk and disaster damage assessment with multi-type geodata, in addition to landslide research and quantitative geomorphology, frequently with object-oriented analysis methods. assessment of post-disaster recovery with remtoe sensing image analsyis and macro-economic agent-based modeling;
C.J. van Westen: Landslide hazard and risk, volcanic hazard and risk assessment, technological risk assessment, developing methods for the analysis of changing multi-hazard risk;

Department of Geo-information Processing:

Menno-Jan Kraak: cartography, visualization of geospatial data (with ormeling), Webcartography, developments and prospects, Exploring geovisualization;
Raul Zurita-Milla: GIS, remote sensing, spatio-temporal analysis, geocomputation, seasonal dynamics;

Department of Natural Resources:

Andy Nelson: spatial and temporal analysis of optical and SAR imagery for crop detection and characterisation, yield estimation from remote sensing and crop simulation models, the use of spatial and temporal data for crop health applications, detection and mapping of crop management practices and mapping suitability for best management practices (technology targetting), applications of remote sensing for crop insurance, Spatial accessibility models, environmental monitoring with temporal remote sensing data;
Andrew Skidmore: vegetation mapping and monitoring, wildlife habitat assessment in East Africa, hyperspectral remote sensing, AI techniques for handling geoinformation and accuracy assessment;
Tiejun Wang: biodiversity mapping and monitoring using satellite remote sensing, ecological niche modeling, Artificial intelligence techniques, ecologically relevant information extraction from remotely sensed data, Understanding the impacts of land use and climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, guiding biodiversity conservation, and thereby achieving sustainable development goals;
Louise (Wieteke) Willemen: making quantitative spatial information on ecosystem services available to support multi-objective decision making in agricultural areas, RS-based ecosystem service mapping and monitoring, impact assessments of integrated restoration, and prioritization of investments in land degradation neutrality actions;

Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-information Management:

Jaap Zevenbergen: innovative, pro-poor land tools in cooperation with UN Habitat and the World Bank, knowledge on Geo-ICT and land governance has to be brought together to align these technological and institutional aspects;
Yola Georgiadou: how people enact, organize, and institutionalize (or not) geo-information technology in various domains (water, environment, urban and land policy) and how infrastructure (the informational, social and material underpinning of human action) is built, maintained and breaks down;
Christiaan (Chrit) Lemmen: His research activities are performed in close co-operation with the Land Administration group of Prof. Jaap Zevenbergen. Chrit is one of the editors of the ISO standard on the Land Administration Domain (ISO 19152). This standard includes a specialisation called the social Tenure Domain Model;
Karin Pfeffer: urban infrastructures and infrastructuring, urban planning support, urban poverty and spatial inequalities, mapping and analyzing urban deprivations/slum areas, Urbanisation patterns and processes, Sensorial environment of urban public spaces, smart urbanism and urban lifestyles, urban remote sensing, Geo-technologies and digital technologies, Geographic information analysis and spatial knowledge, Participatory mapping/qualitative GIS;
Richard Sliuzas: the use of geo-spatial technologies in spatial planning for sustainable urban development with an emphasis on issues related to urban informality, urban poverty alleviation and the relationship between spatial planning and disasters;
Jiong Wang: urban heat island, land surface temperature, local thermal zone, urban slums, earth observation;

Department of Water Resources:

Bob Su: remote sensing and numerical modeling of land surface processes and land-atmosphere interactions, climate data records for climate services, observation of global water cycle, Theory for retrieval of turbulent heat fluxes and evaporation, Simulating radiative transfer, photosynthesis and energy fluxes, Unravelling climate and human impacts in hydrology and water resources, coupled simultaneous transfer of energy, Mass and Momentum in unsaturated soil as a component of earth system model, modeling microwave signature of land surface and retrieval of soil moisture;
Daphne van der Wal: understanding the functioning of aquatic systems, with focus on the physical processes in the coastal zone and their interaction with biology. The response of aquatic systems to climate change and human impact, as well as risks (e.g., flooding) and services (e.g., nature-based flood risk reduction) of the coastal zone. satellite, airborne and near-surface remote sensing in the optical, radar/SAR, and TIR domain, combined with big data analyses and modeling tools. remote sensing, geo-information, spatial patterns, coastal processes, river-sea interactions, water quality, wetlands, bio-geomorphology, morphology, sediment dynamics, aeolian dynamics, nature-based solutions;
Yijian Zeng: land-atmosphere interaction via hydrologic processes and how the interaction affects the climate system, Generation of consistent climate data record using multi-sources of geo-datasets, physical mechanisms of land surface models, application of data assimilation.

Wageningen University & Research (WUR)

Wageningen, Gelderland, the Netherlands

Unit: Lab of Geoinformation Science and Remote Sensing

The Lab of Geoinformation Science and Remote Sensing at Wageningen University is established under the Department of Environmental Sciences and is partaking in many EU projects on forest environment monitoring. This lab’s projects focus on the application of remote sensing to agriculture and forestry monitoring, in areas such as ecological modeling, forest management and precision agriculture. The department has two master programs related to GIS, namely 1) a 2-year master program at WUR and 2) a joint GIMA program with four universities, in which half of the time is taught remotely by UWI instructors. The 2-year master’s program at UWR is flexible in course selection, with 4-5 required courses, and students are free to select other courses and can also do a interdisciplinary thesis that fits their interests.

Professors:

Alexander Klippel: Geoinformation, Geodata, Spatial Cognition, Geographic Event Conceptualization, Crowdscience;
Martin Herold: Remote sensing, Satellite-based Monitoring, Time series analysis, Land use change, Forest;
Arnold Bregt: Land use planning, Spatial data and models, Geomatics, Geographical information systems, Soil sciences;
Ioannis Athanasiadis: Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, Big data, Agriculture, Ecoinformatics;
Jan Clevers: Remote Sensing, Agricultural/Soil Monitoring, Precise Agriculture, Radiative Transfer Model;
Lammert Kooistra: Remote Sensing, Unmanned Aerial Systems, Imaging Spectroscopy, Precision Agriculture, Multi-variate statistics;
Sytze de Bruin: Geo-information Science, Geostatistics, Spatial Data Quality, Remote Sensing;
Jan Verbesselt: Remote Sensing, Time series analysis, Machine learning, Big-Earth Observation data analysis;
Ron van Lammeren: Geovisualization, GIS Education, Geo-information in landscape;
Arend Ligtenberg: Spatial Modeling, Simulation, Spatial Planning, Agent Based Modeling, Complex Adaptive Systems;
Johannes Reiche: Radar Remote Sensing, Multi-Sensor, Near Real-Time Change Monitoring, Forest Dynamics;
Veronique De Sy: Land Use Change, Climate Change Mitigation, REDD+, Forest Monitoring, Sustainable Development;
Judith Verstegen: Geoinformatics, Geosimulation, Spatial Optimization, Human-Environment Interaction, Agent-Based Modelling;
Harm Bartholomeus: Remote Sensing, Soil Science, Physical Geography, Lidar, UVA image process.