UGOD Seminar | Understanding Urban Systems with Geospatial Data Science

There is a growing global trend in the availability and accessibility of geospatial data products with finer spatiotemporal granularities. Concurrently, the rise of open-source computational tools has increased the capacity and efficiency of data processing. Urban challenges are now often framed within the broader objectives of socio-economic development and macro-regional evolutions. Consequently, cities and their intricate networks have become central to regional integration agendas.

In this talk, I will explore the utility of geospatial data science in understanding urban systems. Specifically, I will present a case study on regional integration levels in the Horn of Africa. This study demonstrates how globally available geospatial datasets and open-source computational tools can be utilized to comprehend urban systems in a region that is both under-researched and locally data-poor. Our empirical findings indicate that national spaces play a significantly more crucial role in inter-city connectivity in the Horn of Africa. This is particularly evident in the peripheralization of cities in borderlands. We argue that the region’s connectivity should be understood from a multiscalar and multimodal perspective. This approach provides a baseline for assessing the impact of future interventions aimed at enhancing city connectivity and regional integration.