Dear colleagues,

we are happy to announce the upcoming event of the Data Science @ BOKU. It emerged from a collaboration with the cross-institutional BOKU project “Our Mission: Healthy Soils and Waters”.

Symposium on GIS research data management

on October 1, 2026 14:00 - 18:00 at BOKU, Ilse-Wallentin-Haus (ILWA), seminar room 29

Context

Much of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems are analyzed and visualized using geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing methods (RS). Often, these data are created and managed within projects and stay invisible for colleagues of other institutes, departments and the wider public. It takes a lot of effort to unlock these valuable knowledge hubs, unless research data management infrastructures and practices are in place to ease collaboration for data sharing in and outside of the University.

A pre-workshop has been held in April 2026 to get a generic overview of needs from different key GIS users at BOKU.

Aim

In this symposium we gather to share and discuss existing solutions for geo-spatial research data management at BOKU University and best practices from other organizations.

A dedicated workshop will be held in autumn to discuss open challenges that have been identified earlier. The ultimate goal of the initiative is to identify and suggest pathways for advancing geo-spatial research data management at BOKU.

Tentative Program:

  • Session 1: Behind the scenes tour of the new core facility “Landscape Innovation Lab (LILA)”. How is geospatial data collected, organized and stored in this unique cross-disciplinary hub?
  • Session 2: Solutions for FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) storage across institutes, cloud computing, and access to super computers
  • Session 3: Geo-spatial insights on mission water and soil (content presentations)
  • Session 4: Teaching and training of researchers on geospatial metadata

If you are interested in contributing with a 10 min talk please write an email by 24. Aug. 2026 to

If you would like to participate in the event, please register with your name and your BOKU standard e-mail address via the following registration application (Termino):

Best wishes,

Christine Ornetsmüller
Institute of Aquatic Ecosystem Management & Institute of Soil Science

Theresa Scharl
Data Science at BOKU Team

Mattias Schlögl
Institute of Mountain Risk Engineering & GeoSphere Austria

Anna Hikl & Gabriela Miechtner
Research Support, Innovation & Technology Transfer - FIS- Research Data Management (RDM)

Luca Zoccarato
Core Facilities Bioinformatics