Peter Atkinson

Distinguished Professor of Spatial Data Science, Lancaster University

Peter Atkinson is currently Dean of Science and Technology and Distinguished Professor of Spatial Data Science at Lancaster University. Pete’s research focus is in spatial data science, including remote sensing, spatial and spatio-temporal statistics and physical dynamic models applied to a range of environmental and epidemiological phenomena. The four most significant themes of his research are (i) remote sensing image downscaling and image fusion, based on explicit models of the space-time sampling framework, (ii) remote sensing of global changes in vegetation phenology and its climate drivers, (iii) spatial epidemiology of vector-borne disease transmission systems investigated using geostatistical mixed regression models and agent-based models, and (iv) spatial modelling of natural hazards and their impacts, including flood forecasting, landslide susceptibility mapping and near-Earth objects. Pete has published around 300 peer-reviewed articles on these topics in international scientific journals, with an H-index of 49 in WoS. He is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and the 2020 Distinguished Lecturer of the IAMG. In 2016, he received the Peter Burrough medal of the ISARA organisation and in 2015, he held the Belle van Zuylen Chair at Utrecht University. Pete has led multiple large grants and supervised 60 PhD students. In addition, he has published one co-authored book, edited eight books, written over 50 refereed book chapters and edited eight journal special issues. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier journal Science of Remote Sensing, Associate Editor for Computers and Geosciences and sits on the editorial boards of Geographical Analysis, Spatial Statistics, the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, and Environmental Informatics.