Belen Marti-Cardona

I am a civil engineer specialised in hydrological and hydraulic modelling, and in the exploitation of Earth observation data for hydrological and environmental engineering applications. My experience in Earth observation includes the use of SAR, thermal and optical imagery from space, aircraft and UAV platforms. In addition to my permanent academic role, in the last few years I have worked as a data scientist for companies on the analysis and integration of Earth observation data into their commercial products.

Life matters brought me to the UK, where I am currently a Lecturer in Water Resources Modelling and Remote Sensing. Soon after my arrival, I developed and promoted the launch of a module on GIS and Remote Sensing which is currently being taught. I also teach hydrology and hydraulics at different levels, and feel proud to have infected my enthusiasm for those disciplines to some of my students. I am also pleased with my holistic background as an engineer, which places me in an advantaged position to develop novel applications of remote sensing data.

My research interests involve innovative applications of remote sensing data to water resources problems, including sustainable use, impact of soil moisture on rainfall-runoff transformations, drought mapping and monitoring, evaluation of evapotranspiration water losses per land cover type, assessment of climatic and anthropogenic spatiotemporal impacts, and large scale near-real time crop and soil moisture mapping at the field scale (“field scale” being crucial). I am thrilled about implementing artificial intelligent analysis into these applications.