Lecture from Professor Thomas Esch

On March 14, 2025, students from the LEOO science group participated in a lecture delivered by Professor Thomas Esch, who has been working for over 20 years at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). This was the first meeting in a series of international classes conducted entirely in English languate.

Professor Esch introduced methods of using  remote sensing to analyze urban development. He presented the World Settlement Footprint mask, which allows for the determination of the volume and surface area of all cities around the world, as well as the height of certain buildings. He demonstrated its application using examples from cities such as Lagos in Nigeria, Temuco in Chile, and Munich in Germany.

He also discussed how, in collaboration with the United Nations Human Settlements Program, the World Settlement Footprint was used to develop an indicator that correlates population growth with the expansion of urbanized areas. This tool made it possible to identify regions where urban development is occurring in an unbalanced or unsustainable way.

Additionally, students learned that new datasets are currently being developed. These will allow researchers to extract information such as average temperatures in cities, urban population sizes, the age of buildings, and their specific functions or uses.

Using the Ukrainian cities of Mariupol and Kyiv, Professor Thomas Esch showed how remote sensing is analyzed to estimate the number of victims and the extent of war  casulties in Ukraine.

After Professor Esch’s presentation, students had the opportunity to ask questions, which he eagerly answered. The lecture was enthusiastically received by the students, who are looking forward to future meetings.

The LEOO science club is supervised by Professor Stanisław Lewiński from the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences (CBK PAN) and Renata Michalczuk, a physics teacher Secondary School No. 2 by the name of Emilia Plater in Biała Podlaska.