Dilek Fraisl profile picture

Dilek Fraisl

Senior Research Scholar

Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability Research Group

Advancing Systems Analysis Program

Biography

Dilek Fraisl is a senior research scholar in the Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability Research Group of the IIASA Advancing Systems Analysis Program. She also serves as the managing director of the Citizen Science Global Partnership (CSGP), a global network of networks dedicated to advancing citizen science data and practice for sustainable development.

Her research examines citizen science, artificial intelligence, earth observation, and data innovation as tools for enhancing official statistics and advancing evidence-based policymaking to improve the monitoring and achievement of sustainable development. She specializes in data governance and management, including research on citizen science data quality.

Fraisl serves as principal investigator and contributor to numerous projects focused on citizen science, marine litter, land use and land cover, as well as a range of environmental, socioeconomic, and governance issues, funded by the European Commission, United Nations agencies, and various international donors.

In addition to publishing in high-impact scientific journals, she has contributed to several key international reports, including the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Monitoring Assessment, and major publications from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD).

Fraisl also serves on several boards and expert groups across scientific communities, the UN system, and other global initiatives. These include the UN Statistics Division Collaborative on Citizen Data, UN-Habitat Quality of Life Programme, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Resilience Frontiers, and the UNEP Science-Policy-Business Forum, among others.

She is actively involved in the organizing committees and scientific advisory boards of major European and global conferences, including the UN World Data Forum. With many years of experience, Fraisl has collaborated extensively with international organizations such as the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), World Health Organization (WHO) and various government agencies, ministries, and national statistical offices (NSOs) in advisory, consultancy, and expert roles.

Fraisl holds a PhD in Sustainability Transitions from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Austria. She also has a master’s degree in sustainable development jointly from the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium, the University of Padua in Italy, and Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne in France.


Last update: 05 NOV 2025

Publications

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Lesiv, M. , Fritz, S. , Laso Bayas, J.C. , Dürauer, M., Domian, D., See, L. , McCallum, I. , Danylo, O., Perger, C., Karner, M., Schepaschenko, D. , Moorthy, I. , Fraisl, D. , & Sturn, T. (2018). Global Field Sizes Dataset for Ecosystems Modeling. In: European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2018, 9-13 April 2018, Vienna, Austria.

Fritz, S. & Fraisl, D. (2018). Citizen science data in peer-reviewed publications: The Geo-Wiki experience. In: 4th Austrian Citizen Science Conference, 1-3 February 2018, Salzburg, Austria.

Laso Bayas, J.C. , Lesiv, M. , Waldner, F., Schucknecht, A., Duerauer, M., See, L. , Fritz, S. , Fraisl, D. , Moorthy, I. , McCallum, I. , Perger, C., Danylo, O., Defourny, P., Gallego, J., Gilliams, S., Akhtar, I.H., Baishya, S.J., Baruah, M., Bungnamei, K., Campos, A., Changkakati, T., Cipriani, A., Das, K., Das, K., Das, I., Davis, K.F., Hazarika, P., Johnson, B.A., Malek, Z., Molinari, M.E., Panging, K., Pawe, C.K., Pérez-Hoyos, A., Sahariah, P.K., Sahariah, D., Saikia, A., Saikia, M., Schlesinger, P., Seidacaru, E., Singha, K., & Wilson, J.W. (2017). A global reference database of crowdsourced cropland data collected using the Geo-Wiki platform. Scientific Data 4 e170136. 10.1038/sdata.2017.136.

Moorthy, I. , See, L. , Fritz, S. , McCallum, I. , Perger, C., Dürauer, M., Dresel, C., Sturn, T., Karner, M., Schepaschenko, D. , Lesiv, M. , Danylo, O., Laso Bayas, J.C. , Salk, C., Maus, V. , Fraisl, D. , Domian, D., & Mathieu, P.P. (2017). Crowd-driven tools for the calibration and validation of Earth Observation products. In: Earth Observation Open Science 2017 Conference, 25-28 September 2017, Frascati, Italy.