Dr Fernando Benitez

Dr Fernando Benitez

Lecturer in Spatial Data Science

Researcher profile

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 2464
Email
Fernando.Benitez@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Biography

Currently, I am a Lecturer in Spatial Data Science at the School of Geography & Sustainable Development. I have a PhD in Geoinformatics from the University of Jaume I ( Spain) with the support of Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions and background in Catastral and Geodesic Engineering. I joined the university in November 2022. I use GIScience and data science tools to develop new methods for spatiotemporal problems, focusing on data fusion methods and urban analytics. 

Previously, I worked as a research associate in 2021 at The Alan Turing Institute as part of the AI for Science and Government (ASG) initiative, particularly working in the Urban Analytics Team & Shocks and Resilience to develop spatial modelling methods that can be integrated within the epidemiologic-socio-economic models to tackle policy questions.

In 2020, I held a research fellowship at the University of Jaume I to use machine learning techniques to characterize the urban mobility patterns in medium-sized cities using remote sensing data sources. In 2019, I worked as postdoctoral researcher at the University of St Andrews to develop a novel data fusion method to annotate Earth’s magnetic field data from satellite and terrestrial sources to GPS trajectories - MagGeo.

I have experience in the private sector as former development and business partner manager and head of the geographic innovation team in Esri-Colombia.

Research areas

My research sits at the intersection of Urban Analytics, Geography and Computer Science. I’m interested in developing new spatially enriched computational methods to understand better the relationship between human behaviours (in some cases, movement or interactions) and their environmental impact. My work has been focused on the potential of spatial data and the integration with other types and traditional forms of data to provide evidence of urban dynamics but with a particular emphasis on informing policymaking.

PhD supervision

  • Ali Moayedi
  • Meixuan Liu

Selected publications

 

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