Steffen Fritz
Program Director and Principal Research Scholar
Strategic Initiatives Program
Principal Research Scholar
Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability Research Group
Advancing Systems Analysis Program
Biography
Steffen Fritz is the IIASA Strategic Initiatives Program Director and a researcher in the Novel Data Ecosystems Research Group of the Advancing Systems Analysis Program.He holds a Master of Science degree in Geographical Information for Development from the University of Durham, UK, and a PhD from the University of Leeds, UK. After spending time as a researcher at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy, Fritz joined IIASA as a research scholar, where he has since become the initiator and driving force behind Geo-Wiki.org and several other projects.
He was the principal investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) funded CrowdLand Consolidator Grant and the European Union's Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation funded LandSense and WeObserve projects. He is currently leading the development of the new Picture Pile Platform, which is funded by an ERC Proof of Concept Grant. In the various capacities he acted in since 2009, including coordinator, principal investigator, work package, or task leader, Fritz has been responsible for a diverse range of tasks and an overall budget of approximately EUR 4.2 million. He has more than 160 peer-reviewed publications and has widely published in high-level journals.
Fritz’s research interests include transformative societal and policy solutions, machine learning and artificial intelligence, earth observation, citizen science, crowdsourcing, volunteered geographical information, and citizen generated data. He also has a keen interest in applications of Earth Observation to food security, land-use science, global and regional vegetation monitoring, crop yield and crop acreage estimations of agricultural crops, serious gaming, gamification, in-situ data collection of land use and land cover data via mobile technologies, and the role of citizen science for the monitoring and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Last update: 09 DEC 2021
Publications
See, L. , Fritz, S. , Perger, C., van der Velde, M., Albrecht, F., Schill, C., McCallum, I. , Schepaschenko, D. , & Obersteiner, M. (2013). Urban Geo-Wiki: A crowdsourcing tool for improving urban land cover. In: Citizen E-Participation in Urban Governance: Crowdsourcing and Collaborative Creativity. Eds. Silva, CN, Hershey: IGI Global. ISBN 9781466641709 10.4018/978-1-4666-4169-3.ch008.
Albrecht, F., Perger, C., Schill, C., See, L. , McCallum, I. , Collins, R., & Fritz, S. (2013). Using crowdsourcing to examine land acquisitions in Ethiopia. DOI:10.1553/giscience2013s100. In: GI_Forum 2013 - Creating the GISociety. Conference Proceedings.
van der Velde, M., See, L. , You, L., Balkovič, J. , Fritz, S. , Khabarov, N. , Obersteiner, M. , & Wood, S. (2013). Affordable nutrient solutions for improved food security as evidenced by crop trials. PLoS ONE 8 (4) 10.1371/journal.pone.0060075.
Fritz, S. , See, L. , van der Velde, M., Nalepa, R.A., Perger, C., Schill, C., McCallum, I. , Schepaschenko, D. , Kraxner, F., Vakolyuk, M., Albrecht, F., Shaw, B., & Obersteiner, M. (2013). Downgrading recent estimates of land available for biofuel production. Environmental Science & Technology 47 (3) 1688-1694. 10.1021/es303141h.
Fritz, S. , See, L. , You, L., Justice, C., Becker-Reshef, I., Bydekerke, L., Cumani, R., Defourny, P., Erb, K., Foley, J., Gilliams, S., Herrero, M., McCallum, I. , Obersteiner, M. , Ramankutty, N., & van der Velde, M. (2013). The need for improved maps of global cropland. EOS 94 (3) 31-32. 10.1002/2013EO030006.