The Institute of Geography at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, particularly the Geoinformatics division, led by Prof. Dr. Alexander Brenning and the GIScience Group at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, participated in International GIS Day 2024 on November 21 with a networking event for researchers, students, and stakeholders from government and business. This year’s focus was Geographic Information Science for Natural Hazards. The event, which was hybrid, took place on November 21, 2024, from 13:00 to 17:00 CET, both in person in the auditorium of the university’s main building and online.

The program included presentations on the application of GIS/geospatial data in research, contributions from students in the Master’s program in Geoinformatics, a poster exhibition, and a booth presented by ELLIS Unit Jena.

The event began with a welcome speech by Prof. Dr. Alexander Brenning, followed by a presentation on the benefits, limitations, and applications of multi-temporal airborne lidar data in assessing the geomorphological impact of the extreme Ahr flood of 2021. This was delivered by Dr. Rainer Bell (University of Bonn) and Fabian Weidt (University of Bonn and GeoFact GmbH). Dr. Annika Künne from the Flood Information Center in Jena, State Office for Environment, Mining and Nature Conservation then presented on the assessment of drying patterns and low flows under climate change in Europe and Thuringia.

After a coffee break and poster session, the event continued with contributions from students in the Master’s program in Geoinformatics. Gerrit Eisele and Johannes Halbauer presented a comparison of machine learning and deep learning methods for forest height prediction from satellite time series, while Fabian Schreiter introduced a generic workflow for climate indices calculation in web-based information systems.

The event concluded with a talk on EGMS Insights, an R-based tool for processing and managing EGMS products, presented by Dr. Nicuşor Necula from the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi, Romania. Afterward, participants had the opportunity to network informally while enjoying snacks and coffee.