GeoTechE is pleased to announce our next public lecture, given by Professor Andreas Christian Braun, founding director of Kassel Institute for Sustainability at the University of Kassel in Germany.
Presenting from the perspective of critical sustainability studies, the talk will critically question the quest for accuracy in the domain of remote sensing based land-use and land-cover analyses.
Prof Braun’s work highlights that data availability and increasingly simple image classification techniques increase the use of such analyses. Using accuracy metrics, "the results are considered to have sufficient quality, exceeding thresholds published in the literature. A typical practice in many studies is to confuse accuracy in remote sensing with quality, as required by physical geography. However, notions such as quality are subject to normative considerations and performative practices, which differ between scientific domains." (Braun 2021, 706)
In this talk, Professor Braun outlines norms and practices shaping the understanding of quality and their relation to physical geography. He argues that "results considered more accurate in remote sensing terms can be less informative – or meaningful – in geographical terms" (Braun 2021, 706). He proposes how to apply remote sensing land-use analyses more constructively in physical geography.
This talk is given as part of GeoTechE: Geotechnology Ethics, a new course on the Geoversity platform that engages learners in the societal and ethical issues of geodata technologies.
You can attend the lecture in person or join the live stream. Indicate how you'll be joining on the registration page.
