Ian McCallum
Research Group Leader and Senior Research Scholar
Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability Research Group
Advancing Systems Analysis Program
Biography
Ian McCallum leads the Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability (NODES) Research Group of the Advancing Systems Analysis (ASA) Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria. NODES exploits both citizen and data science combined with Earth observations to monitor, analyze, and foster progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The group is comprised of 30 members with expertise in applied research, development, and project management.McCallum contributes to numerous research projects within NODES, applying various geo-spatial analysis techniques to global environmental and socioeconomic challenges. For example, he is leading the efforts to develop new and novel data and methods within the GRANULAR Project – an ambitious project developing indicators of rural development in Europe. He also leads the activities on stakeholder engagement within the EuropaBON project, a policy-oriented effort with the aim to develop a comprehensive biodiversity monitoring coordination center in Europe. Furthermore, he contributes to the development of the Geo-Wiki, a globally recognized Citizen Science platform designed to monitor the Earth's surface and related activities.
McCallum holds graduate degrees in Forest Science, where he specialized in the application of Geographic Information Systems to issues surrounding view-shed analysis and wildlife habitat modeling, and a doctoral degree applying satellite derived biophysical variables to model vegetation productivity. He is currently on the faculty of the Master of Science in Environmental Technology and International Relations (ETIA) in Vienna, Austria, where he teaches a course on Remote Sensing and the Environment.
Prior to joining IIASA, he worked for both forest industry and forest consulting firms in central and western Canada and the United States.
Last update: 20 MAR 2023
Publications
Popova, G., Liquete, C., Bormpoudakis, D., Maes, J., McCallum, I. , Kissling, W., Brotons, L., Breeze, T., Moran, A., Lumbierres, M., Friedrich, L., Herrando, S., Lyche Solheim, A., Fernandez, M., Fernández, N., Hirsch, T., Carvalho, L., Vihervaara, P., Junker, J., Georgieva, I. , Kühn, I., Van Grunsven, R., Lipsanen, A., Body, G., Goodson, H., Valdez, J., Bonn, A., & Pereira, H. (2024). D2.3 EuropaBON Proposal for an EU Biodiversity Observation Coordination Centre (EBOCC). ARPHA Preprints 10.3897/arphapreprints.e128042.
See, L. , Fraisl, D. , Seidu, O., Fredua, K., Weller, S., Kobla-Amalgo, T., Gafari, D., & McCallum, I. (2024). How citizen science has changed SDG monitoring of marine plastic pollution in Ghana. In: ECSA 2024, 3-6 April 2024, Vienna.
McCallum, I. , Walker, J., Fritz, S. , Grau, M., Hannan, C., Hsieh, I-S., Lape, D., Mahone, J., McLester, C., Mellgren, S., Piland, N., See, L. , Svolba, G., & de Villiers, M. (2023). Crowd-Driven Deep Learning Tracks Amazon Deforestation. Remote Sensing 15 (21) e5204. 10.3390/rs15215204.
Fraisl, D. , See, L. , Bowers, R., Seidu, Omar, Fredua, K.B., Bowser, A., Meloche, M., Weller, S., Amaglo-Kobla, T., Ghafari, D., Laso Bayas, J.C. , Campbell, J., Cameron, G., Fritz, S. , & McCallum, I. (2023). The contributions of citizen science to SDG monitoring and reporting on marine plastics. Sustainability Science 18 2629-2647. 10.1007/s11625-023-01402-4.
Orduña-Cabrera, F. , Sandoval-Gastelum, M., McCallum, I. , See, L. , Fritz, S. , Karanam, S., Sturn, T., Javalera Rincón, V. , & Gonzalez-Navarro, F.F. (2023). Investigating the Use of Street-Level Imagery and Deep Learning to Produce In-Situ Crop Type Information. Geographies 3 (3) 563-573. 10.3390/geographies3030029.