Mr. Josep Serra Gallego

Josep is a Spatial Data Scientist in the Spatial Ecology team of the Community and Restoration Ecology group within the Biodiversity Science Area at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH). Before joining UKCEH, his research focused on the use of Deep Learning and Convolutional Neural Networks for land cover and land use classification. His MSc dissertation, conducted in partnership with the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland (OSNI), also focused on the use of Convolutional Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for hedgerow detection in Northern Ireland.

He joined UKCEH in 2023 after serving as Head of IT, based in London, where he led key technology initiatives. As part of the Spatial Ecology team, he has worked on the validation of UKCEH’s Land Cover plus: Crops products, and the design and implementation of downscaling systems for land cover change model outputs.  He specialises in handling spatial data and developing workflows to integrate and assess complex spatial datasets using several software packages of the ESRI/ArcGIS suite of GIS applications, and programming languages such as Python and Arcade. He has worked extensively in the design, testing, and implementation of GIS-based apps, dashboards, StoryMaps, and visualisations for the analysis and exploration of species distribution models, climate change impacts and capitals, land cover change, suitability analysis, assessment of AES targets and hedgerow identification and characterisation.