Paolo has more than 20 years of professional experience working in a wide range of contexts: Humanitarian (United Nations & NGOs), Academic, and Private Sectors, mainly in Africa and partly in Asia. His main areas of specialization are GIS & Remote Sensing (including Unmanned Aerial Systems –UAS- and Google Earth Engine), Field Data Collection (Hydrology, Sedimentology, Geology), Fluvial Geomorphology, and Natural Hazards studies.
In March 2011 he joined the IHE Delft as a Senior Lecturer in Earth Science and Remote Sensing in the chair group of River Basin Development where he is the reference person for the Mapping and Remote Sensing activities.
Scopus, Orcid, Geomorphological Mapping, Hydro-Meteorological Hazards, Risks, and Disasters, and Kenya - A natural Outlook
WiODER Project, IAHR WG on Drones, Associate editor of the Journal of Maps, Topic editor of ISPR Int. J. of Geo-Information
He has edited two Atlases of Somalia for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and a digital Atlas of Afghanistan for the NGOs iMMAP. He chairs thematic sessions at international conferences (regularly at IAG, EGU).
Paolo graduated in Geology in the year 2000 with a MSc research on Field Geology (110/110 cum laude) at the University of Roma3, Italy. He then got his PhD in Fluvial geomorphology at the University of Chieti, in Italy, in early 2005.
Research Summary
Since he joined IHE Delft his research focused on four main areas:
- Free or low cost remote sensing data (including historical aerial photography and Google Earth Engine) and open source software for water resource assessment, wetland dynamics analyses and ecosystem service valuation mapping;
- Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), Kite Aerial Photography (KAP) and Structure from Motion (SfM) software for mapping and monitoring river morphology, water bodies, Digital Terrain Modelling and for ecosystem service mapping;
- New methods for hyperspatial data analyses (Object Based Image Analyses – OBIA and Machine Learning –ML)
- Sediment dynamics and fingerprinting at the basin scale.
More broadly Paolo has a keen interest in sustainable development that arises from his long term residency in developing countries.
The countries where he has been working so far are (alphabetical order): Afghanistan, Australia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Italy, Kenya, Mozambique, Netherlands, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Thailand, and United Kingdom. He has lived in Kenya (6 years), Mozambique (4 years) and Ethiopia (2 years so far).
Publications
A complete list of publications can be found in Google Scholar.