William Ray Email & Phone Number

Graz, Styria, Austria

Since March 2024, I am part of the Education & Enablement Team as an Education Solutions Engineer.

Graz, Styria, Austria

After the acquisition of Sinergise by Planet Labs, I joined the Professional Services team as a Solutions Engineer.

Graz, Styria, Austria

Part of the Sentinel Hub team located in Graz, Austria, much of my work focussed on adding value to the Sentinel Hub services and working on outreach activities promoting projects such as the Euro Data Cube, EO4ALPs and the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem.

Harwell Campus, Oxfordshire

For just over two years I was part of the Earth Observation team at Deimos Space UK, and had exposure to a number of EO projects. Most of my work revolved around software development and deep learning applications in EO. For instance, I contributed to the Sibelius project, developing a DL model to detect unmapped herd migration tracks in Mongolia. I have also been involved in the development of SKAi an Innovate UK project led by Soil Essentials Ltd, a re-trainable smart camera vision system which will be used to recognise, map and precision apply agrochemicals to crops.

Harwell Campus, Oxfordshire

After the ESA demonstration project was completed at the end of 2017, Spottitt became a commercial entity and I transferred over from Qurus to Spottitt. From May 2018, my responsibilities grew to manage and lead the technical side of the company leading the code sprints, interacting with users and managing the work of other members of the team. This included the development of improved rooftop recognition algorithm using neural networks, and the addition of several new analysis tools on Spottitt’s geoportal.

Harwell Campus, Oxfordshire

My main role as the Earth Observation Specialist was to lead the development of the Earth Observation analytics for the Spottitt ESA Demonstration Project. During the project, I developed fully automated algorithms that processed and analysed EO & GIS data for our users Onshore Wind Farm developers. This included object and rule-based land cover analyses & a rooftop recognition that incorporated deep learning. Furthermore, in October 2016, I performed the wind energy potential analysis for Project Hephaestus, in collaboration with the Satellite Applications Catapult.

Wimborne, Dorset

GIS Analyst within the Strategic Projects division, who specialise in energy and infrastructure projects. I produced mapping and land plans for a variety of major energy and infrastructure projects, including the East Anglia Offshore Wind Zone and the North West Coast Connections Project. This involved working closely with clients such as National Grid and Scottish Power, to check and amend registered land titles and to produce land plans. I also participated in site searching for strategic land opportunities and wetland reclamation. During this period, I gained extensive experience using Ordnance Survey products, Land Registry data and other national datasets in vector format.

Ruthin

Alleviation of Flood Risk using SuDS on the River Dane in Congleton, CheshireThis study aimed to model the effects of utilising SuDS upstream of Congleton onflood risk in the town, as part of a TE SuSuDS project in the River Weavercatchment. This was achieved by using remotely sensed data sources e.g. LiDARDEM and GIS analysis. Firstly, flood extents in Congleton were modelled usingISIS 1D. Spatial analysis found that reducing flows by 20% had a dramatic effecton the number of buildings inundated by flooding.SuDS schemes upstream of Congleton were then explored using suitabilitymapping, identifying suitable sites for water meadows and afforestation. Thepotential effects of implementing these land use changes were then modelledusing ISIS 2D. From these results, recommendations for the sites of future SuDSwere put forward to the rest of the TE project.Keywords: Hydraulic Modelling, Fluvial Flooding, SuDS, Flood Management, GIS

Aberystwyth

Assessing the feasibility of using the Hansen et al 2013 global forest change study to monitor deforestation in WalesThis study aimed to assess the accuracy and precision of the 2013 global forest change conducted by a team at the University of Maryland led by Matthew Hansen. The study set out to assess this in the context of Wales, trying to ascertain how this data could be used by the Welsh Assembly Government to report on forest loss in Wales. To assess the accuracy, forest polygons extracted from aerial photography acquired by the Welsh Assembly Government were used to create a reference dataset to compare the University of Maryland results to. A vector analysis of accuracy using a method developed by Kontoes et al (2009) was then used to assess the successfully classified areas of forest loss, the falsely classified areas and the areas the study’s classifier skipped. Unfortunately, due to data processing issues, only a tiny area was analysed using this method. The results were also discouraging with very low detected area efficiencies. On this evidence, it was recommended that the Maryland data was not suitable to use as a monitoring tool because of its very poor accuracy. However, the study was a very small sample size, and the data should be explored further as there is certainly potential for using it as a tool to estimate forest change on a Welsh national scale.

Master'S Degree, Remote Sensing And Geography, Merit

Modules: Advanced Research Skills Spatial Data Acquisition Fundamentals of Remote Sensing and GIS Work experience in Remote Sensing.

Bachelor Of Science (Bsc), Geography, Second Class Honours (Upper Division)

Year One Modules: Planet Earth, The Atmosphere and the Water Cycle, The City and Country: Processes of Conflict and Change, Development.

Education record