Tobias Sturn
Research Scholar
Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability Research Group
Advancing Systems Analysis Program
Biography
Tobias Sturn received his Master’s degree from the FH Technikum Vienna in Game Engineering and Simulation in 2010. He then worked as project assistant at the Computer Graphics Institute at TU Vienna. In the Landspotting Project he has been collaborating with IIASA to design and develop serious games for improving global land cover. He joined the Ecosystems Services and Management Program (ESM) at IIASA in April 2014, to design and develop serious games like Cropland Capture, Picture Pile or FotoQuest Go.Mr. Sturn's interests cover human-computer interaction, computer graphics and all aspects of gaming, especially games with a purpose and edutainment. With his game development company Emoak he has published a number of games like 'Let’s Dance” or “Paper Climb'. The latter game has been finalist for the Content Award and Future Zone Award. With the help of his latest serious game development 'Cropland Capture' more than 4 million square kilometers of global land surface have already been validated to date by players to improve global land cover maps. The game has been widely featured in the media such as by NPR and The Guardian.
Last update: 13 NOV 2020
Publications
Fraisl, D. , Sturn, T., Karanam, S., & Fritz, S. (2026). Citizen Science, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the Urban Monitoring Framework: Linking Local Action to Global Impact. In: World Urban Forum 13, 17–22 May 2026, Baku, Azerbaijan.
Hofhansl, F. , Milenkovic, M., Weinacker, R., Sturn, T., Karanam, S., Georgieva, I. , Wild, B., Pfeifer, N., Hollaus, M., Zappa, L., Bruckman, V.J., McCallum, I. , & Fritz, S. (2026). Tree-Quest: A Citizen Science App for Collecting Single-Tree Attributes. DOI:10.5194/egusphere-egu26-3906. In: EGU General Assembly 2026, 03 May - 08 May 2026, Vienna.
Georgieva, I. , Milenkovic, M., Hofhansl, F. , Sturn, T., Weinacker, R., Karanam, S., Wild, B., Hollaus, M., McCallum, I. , & Fritz, S. (2026). Tree-Quest Campaign 2025 and a Citizen-Science Tool to Measure Tree Biomass and Carbon. In: Österreichische Citizen Science Konferenz 2026, 24-26 February, 2026, Leoben, Austria.
Milenkovic, M., Hofhansl, F. , Weinacker, R., Sturn, T., Karanam, S., Wild, B., Hollaus, M., Neumayr, C., Iglseder, A., Pfeifer, N., Zappa, L., Bruckman, V., Breitfuss-Schiffer, R., Schumacher, B., Gresse, H., Joly, A., Bonnet, P., Shchepashchenko, D. , See, L. , McCallum, I. , & Fritz, S. (2025). Dataset for the analysis of Tree-Quest measurements collected in Laxenburg Park and Stadtpark. 10.5281/zenodo.18063770.
Laso Bayas, J.C. , Milenkovic, M., Sturn, T., Weinacker, R., Hofhansl, F. , Shishodia, M., Karanam, S., Crocket, L., Subash, A., See, L. , & McCallum, I. (2025). Geo-Quest mobile application: Easy and accurate Earth Observation-enhanced ground data collection. In: The Living Planet Symposium, 23—27 June, 2025, Vienna, Austria.