Tom Hengl transforms data into maps with open-source software and geo-information systems. He is co-founder of two start-ups: OpenGeoHub and EnvirometriX. Commercial projects go to EnvirometriX, while other customers are welcome at the non-profit foundation OpenGeoHub. These ‘research organizations’ were founded in 2018 and have 12 employees.
OpenGeoHub started with summer schools for students from all over the world who wanted to learn how to collect, integrate and visualize spatial data. Most of the employees are ‘modern nerds’, from Germany, Brazil, Australia, Italy and the Netherlands, who now work at the Agro Business Park in Wageningen. The foundation has just finished harmonizing several datasets to construct a map of land cover in Europe for the period 2000 to 2019. Hengl shows on this map how Veenendaal has grown over the past 20 year and how the vineyards in the Italian province of Puglia have increased.
We go further where Google Maps stops
‘We go further where Google Maps stops,’ says Hengl. His company also developed a map of soil types and vegetation in Africa for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as input for a soil and agronomy information system. OpenGeoHub is collaborating closely with the Laboratory of Geo-Information Science and Remote Sensing at WUR, with two joint PhD students. It has also started collaboration with the university’s Farming Systems Ecology group. If you are a student in Geo Information Science or Environmetrics, you might want to contact them for a potential internship.
