Dr Christina Karakizi

As a researcher in the first year of my post doc career, the impact of my work up to now is primarily depicted on the findings of my doctoral dissertation:

https://www.didaktorika.gr/eadd/handle/10442/51551?locale=en

In this dissertation we have thoroughly studied different aspects of land cover and crop type mapping using multitemporal multispectral satellite data of high spatial resolution. Recent advances from cutting-edge international research efforts were described and discussed. Critical intermediate processing steps were examined through experimentation and by comparing best practices with the recent relevant published literature.

The main contribution of the dissertation was the development of an efficient mapping framework that exploits high resolution multispectral satellite data for the production of annual land cover and crop type maps at national scale. Novel aspects of our approach rely on the exploitation of radiometrically, geometrically and temporally consistent Sentinel-2 data along with an experimentally-validated and highly reliable training dataset, created for 42 thematic classes matched to the Greek landscape. Under the proposed framework, selected spectral and auxiliary features were successfully employed using machine learning classification techniques, while their respective contribution has been thoroughly assessed. The performed rigorous external validation, which was completely independent from the mapping procedures, resulted into an overall accuracy of 82%. Average user’s accuracy for the 17 non-crop classes was estimated at approx. 85%, while for the 25 different crop types at 79%. Major arable crops (e.g., cereals, grass fodders, industrial crops) which cover most of the agricultural land in Greece, resulted into an average user accuracy level above 87%.

To the best of our knowledge, this dissertation resulted in the first land cover map for Greece at 10m spatial resolution with such a thematic analysis and such levels of accuracy and reliability. Furthermore, we hold in high regard the fact that the developed mapping framework was implemented based on free and open software, while the execution of the main large scale experiments was performed in the greek national HPC research infrastructure at GRNET.

2022-2024: EU H2020 Marie Curie ‘SAV-EO’ Project: “Land Degradation Neutrality: Towards an Earth Observation-based Early Warning System for Savannah Degradation”

2022: EU H2020 FET ‘RAMONES’: Radioactivity Monitoring in Ocean Ecosystems

2021: EU H2020 ‘iToBoS’: Intelligent Total Body Scanner for Early Detection of Melanoma

2020-2021: ‘Carbon Regions Transition Master Plan’, NTUA Research Committee

2019-2020: ‘Assessment of social, economic and environmental aspects for the estimation of the bearing capacity of Thira (Santorini) Municipality’, SUPCO, Ellet

2018: ‘CORINE Land Cover 2018 production - HRL’s 2015 verification and Urban Atlas 2012 Enrichment’, Copernicus land monitoring services - Hellenic Cadastre

2016-2017: ‘LandMAP’: Multitemporal Land Use/ Land Cover Mapping at National Scale from High Resolution Satellite Data with Deep Learning, Research Projects for Excellence IKY/SIEMENS, NTUA

2016-2017: ‘Land cover products validation and intercomparison in the South Central and Eastern European Regional Information Network (SCERIN) area’, SCERIN, Global Observation of Forest and Land Cover Dynamics, NASA, START, NTUA

2014-2015: ‘Automatic Detection and Modelling of 2D and 3D changes in the urban environment from multi-modal, multi-temporal remote sensing data’, THALES Programme, MIS 380134, co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund – ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program “Education and Lifelong Learning” of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF)

October 2016 - April 2022: Teaching Assistant at the School of Rural, Surveying and Geoinformatics Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece

Courses: I. Digital Image Analysis for Remote Sensing, II. Photo-interpretation and Remote Sensing, III. Summer Field Course in Remote Sensing, IV. Special Applications of Photo-interpretation and Remote Sensing

Supervision of Bachelor and Master Thesis

Link to publications:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2Rj5Z7UAAAAJ&hl=el