Successful Master’s thesis defense by Prince Lartey Lawson

Successful Master’s thesis defense by Prince Lartey Lawson

April 30, 2024

Our EAGLE Prince Lartey Lawson successfully defended his Master’s thesis today (April 30th) titled “” Unmasking the Shadow Economy in Ghana: Mapping the Distribution of Umbrella Covered Informal Vendors In Kumasi”.

From the abstract of his thesis: Informal trade in sub–Saharan Africa is still prevalent and for such businesses to transition towards sustainability, reliable information reflecting their extent is crucial. In this study, data from Unmanned Aerial System campaigns executed from 2017 to 2023 were repurposed for the detection and quantification of informal trade activities canopied under umbrellas in Kumasi, Ghana. Umbrella Covered Informal Vendors (UCIV) were deciphered under the requirements of the Ghanaian Registrar General’s Department as informal entities in this study. However, due to No-Flight Zones and other restrictions making UAS data for the entirety of Kumasi unattainable, a Random Forest regression model was utilized to predict the total count of UCIV in Kumasi. Additionally, the efficiency of 2D and 3D data types in instance segmentation of UCIV were compared.

The master thesis was carried out under the supervision of Jakob Schwalb-Willmann and Dr. Michael Thiel.

 

 

you may also like:

New study on the conservation of biodiversity in West Africa

New study on the conservation of biodiversity in West Africa

A new study by our team, led by Insa Otte, on the conflict between biodiversity conservation in protected areas and agricultural development in West Africa has been published in the journal Natur und Landschaft. The abstract: According to the Human Development Report...

New study on invasive species in Rwanda

New study on invasive species in Rwanda

A new publication by EORC members Lilly Schell, Insa Otte, Sarah Schönbrodt-Stitt and Konstantin Müller, was just published   in the Journal Frontiers in Plant Science. Their study, “Synergistic use of satellite, legacy, and in situ data to predict spatio-temporal...

Successful PhD defense by Adomas Liepa

Successful PhD defense by Adomas Liepa

We’re happy to announce that our PhD student Adomas Liepa has successfully defended his doctoral thesis, titled “Potential of Satellite Earth Observation in Seasonal Monitoring of Complex Agricultural Environments of East Africa”, on Thursday, July 24th at 11:00 AM....

Exploring Arctic Vegetation Patterns: PhD Fieldwork on Svalbard

Exploring Arctic Vegetation Patterns: PhD Fieldwork on Svalbard

This summer, one of our PhD students, Elio Rauth, embarked on an exciting scientific journey to the High Arctic—conducting detailed vegetation surveys on the remote archipelago of Svalbard. The aim? To better understand the intricate mosaic of Arctic plant communities...