Yifang Ban

Dr. Yifang Ban is the Professor and Director of the Division of Geoinformatics at the Department of Urban Planning and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and an Associate Director - Dissemination and Impact at Digital Futures in Stockholm, Sweden. Before joining KTH in 2004, Dr. Ban was a tenured Associate Professor at York University in Toronto, Canada. She received her PhD degree from the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Professor Yifang Ban's research has been focused on Earth observation big data analytics, machine learning/deep learning, and their applications in environmental change monitoring (e.g. urbanization, wildfires, flooding) to support sustainable and resilient development.  She has published extensively on these topics.  Professor Ban is the PI/Co-PI for a number of impactful projects, including EO-AI4GlobalChange (funded by Digital Futures), HARMONIA (funded by EU H2020), SAR4Wildfire (funded by FORMAS & ESA), and Climate Change Induced Disaster Management in Africa (funded by EU Erasmus+).

Professor Ban is an invited expert of the UN Habitat’s Technical Committee on Human Settlements Indicators for the SDGs.  She was an EU expert for evaluations of European Research Council proposals,  FP7 Marie Curie proposals as well as proposals for various national granting agencies.  She is also a co-chair of the ICA Commission on Sensor-Driven Mapping,  a co-lead of the GEO initiative ‘Global Urban Observation and Information’ (2012-2022), an associate editor and guest editor of major remote sensing journals, and a committee member of major international remote sensing conferences.