Remote Sensing and Data Assimilation research group (RSDA)

The Research Group on Land Modeling, Remote Sensing and Data Assimilation (RSDA) leverages large satellite-based datasets and numerical modelling from the local to global scale, with a focus on terrestrial water (soil moisture, vegetation, groundwater and snow) and its applications. Our research group was initiated in January 2016 and employs a senior scientist, ~2 postdoctoral researchers and ~10 PhD students. We also support a limited number of visiting scientists, Bsc and Msc thesis students. The group provides high-level education in Earth observation and hydrological processes, and is known for international research with ties to operational research institutes. We offer widespread service within the KU Leuven, and nationally and internationally via multiple commissions of trust and dissemination of research findings. RSDA can be roughly divided in 3 clusters of researchers, working on (i) soil moisture, vegetation, crop and irrigation estimation, (ii) peatland and groundwater processes, and (iii) snow or cryosphere processes. Our team invests in fundamental research to optimize the use of microwave-based and other satellite observations, to advance land surface and crop models based on process insights, and to optimize data assimilation and machine learning techniques. We also work on applications such as hazard prediction, digital twins, climate impact studies, land-atmosphere coupling, peatland monitoring and crop yield forecasting. The academic research is always embedded within a larger international collaboration framework and ideally geared towards future operational implementation.