Research & Publications
The foundation of SESAC is built on years of interdisciplinary research. Below is a curated list of peer-reviewed publications from our core team members, spanning Earth Observation, Social Science, and AI.
Abascal, A., Vanhuysse, S., Grippa, T., Rodriguez-Carreño, I., Georganos, S., Wang, J., ... & Wolff, E. (2024). AI perceives like a local: predicting citizen deprivation perception using satellite imagery. npj Urban Sustainability, 4(1), 20.
Burke, M., Driscoll, A., Lobell, D. B., & Ermon, S. (2021). Using satellite imagery to understand and promote sustainable development. Science, 371(6535), eabe8628. Greenhalgh, T., Jackson, C., Shaw, S., & Janamian, T. (2016). Achieving research impact through co‐creation in community‐based health services: literature review and case study. The Milbank Quarterly, 94(2), 392-429.
Greenhalgh, T., Jackson, C., Shaw, S., & Janamian, T. (2016). Achieving research impact through co‐creation in community‐based health services: literature review and case study. The Milbank Quarterly, 94(2), 392-429.
Voorberg, W. H., Bekkers, V. J., & Tummers, L. G. (2015). A systematic review of co-creation and co-production: Embarking on the social innovation journey. Public management review, 17(9), 1333-1357.
Daoud, A., Jordán, F., Sharma, M., Johansson, F., Dubhashi, D., Paul, S., & Banerjee, S. (2023). Using satellite images and deep learning to measure health and living standards in India. Social Indicators Research, 167(1), 475-505.
Georganos, S., Grippa, T., Niang Gadiaga, A., Linard, C., Lennert, M., Vanhuysse, S., ... & Kalogirou, S. (2021). Geographical random forests: a spatial extension of the random forest algorithm to address spatial heterogeneity in remote sensing and population modelling. Geocarto International, 36(2), 121-136.
Grillitsch, M., Sotarauta, M., Asheim, B., Fitjar, R. D., Haus-Reve, S., Kolehmainen, J., ... & Stihl, L. (2023). Agency and economic change in regions: identifying routes to new path development using qualitative comparative analysis. Regional Studies, 57(8), 1453-1468.
Eklund, L., Degerald, M., Brandt, M., Prishchepov, A. V., & Pilesjö, P. (2017). How conflict affects land use: agricultural activity in areas seized by the Islamic State. Environmental Research Letters, 12(5), 054004.
Keola, S., Andersson, M., & Hall, O. (2015). Monitoring economic development from space: using nighttime light and land cover data to measure economic growth. World Development, 66, 322-334.
Sarmadi, H., Hall, O., Rögnvaldsson, T., & Ohlsson, M. (2025). Leveraging ChatGPT's Multimodal Vision Capabilities to Rank Satellite Images by Poverty Level: Advancing Tools for Social Science Research. arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.14546.
Hall, O., Sarmadi, H., & Rognvaldsson, T. (2023). How AI ‘sees’ the world–what happened when we trained a deep learning model to identify poverty. The Conversation.
